


Nothing to me

by Ruta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Conversations, Dream Pack, Endgame, F/M, Post-season 7, War, Wolf Pack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-17 00:04:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11839821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: She would like to hate him, the gods know that is all she wants. The truth is she cannot.You can hate someone you loved, but you cannot stop loving that person even when you hate him.Picks up after season 7 with Jon's return to Winterfell. The longing for the dead is not the longing for the living. Sansa knows it by heart.





	1. Chapter 1

“I owe you nothing. And you are nothing to me. Thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love.”

_Moulin Rouge_

 

 

It's Jon's smile, Jon's eyes and hands, his voice that she misses the most. The longing for him is different from that for Mother or Father or Robb or Rickon - _moments of sleep when reality gives way to dreams, relives her memories with the vividness that she only associates to pain and fear now._

The longing for the dead is not the longing for the living. Death exacerbates the feeling of loss, but also serves to make it definitive, immutable, bitter. There is no return or compromise. You can miss someone who died the same way you suffer for someone that will come back to you. Yet the heart refutes deception, along with the mind, and perceives that what has been lost in that case has been lost irretrievably.

Jon is different. As distant and unattainable he may seem at the present, he is alive. Not like Arya and Bran, as echoes of possibilities and mirages. Jon has become the only fixed point in a world thrown into chaos, the only support, the only comfort. _Jon is alive._ He walks under the same sky, trampling on the same ground and breathing the same air. Jon is alive and life, unlike death, is a continuous change, constantly evolving.

 

* * *

 

If before she wasn't sure - _whispers in the stables and the kitchens, dazzling stories of glory and death, already famous songs resounding in the great hall to celebrate the immaculate beauty of the queen coming overseas, a warrior who casted a spell over the King in the North, who will melt the ice of winter with the breath of her dragons' fire and will unravel the darkness of the Long Night_ \- if before Sansa had preferred to wallow in the doubt of uncertainty, into the hasty hope that accompanies the indeterminacy of an ambiguous situation, one that must be defined, now she can no longer pretend. 

The truth is written in the shame that Jon's face expresses. The discomfort is palpable, one can cut it like scissors with a piece of cloth.

 _Discomfort_. A feeling that should no longer be part of their relationship. In the months immediately following their reunion in Castle Black, their relationship had been marked by mutual esteem and respect, whereas once, _before Joffrey and Cersei, before the Red Wedding and Ramsay, when the world was a golden place of ballades and blissful ignorance,_ whereas once had dominated mistrust and wounded pride. 

But that was before. Before he went to Dragonstone. Before he lost his head and his heart to the foreign queen. Before he betrayed her and the North. Where is her brother now? Where is the stubborn man who contradicted every word she said, who mulled over a decision and then acted impulsively? Where is that strong, kind and courageous man now? Where is he, if not under the skirts of a woman, ready to intercede for her with the Lords to plead her rise to the throne at the expense of his own family?

 _My brother is dead._  

She didn’t think that when Bran told them the story of Lyanna Stark's death, the woman who preferred love to honor and duty; the story of Jon's birth.

After all what is a name if not an empty simulacrum, similar to the stone statues in the crypts?

 _Jon Targaryen. Jon Snow. Jon Stark. Jon._ _Names, only this._

No, she didn’t think so then. She had not lost him yet. She thinks that now, looking at the shadows in Jon’s sullen gaze _-_ he doesn’t show remorse, he doesn’t seem stricken nor guilty - as she lives his betrayal as a tear, a pain that echoes those of the past and multiplies them to infinity. 

Sansa closes her eyes, holding back the need to cry. She remembers the little girl she was: alone, frightened, in love with the idea of love and deceived by the very same idea. She remembers and remembers until the memories are blended together in the woman she has become.

When she opens her eyes, her face is that of her mother. _Placid. Static._ _Inexpressive_. Not the serene and sweet face of her childhood, but the one that has populated her bloody nightmares for years, what she imagines it must have been just before everything ended: when after her brother’s death the horror and hatred had probably overwhelmed her to such an extent as to make her feel the death in her heart, no longer an enemy but a flamboyant temptress. 

Sansa meets Jon’s eyes and feels a vengeful and fierce pleasure when he cringes in front of her cold smile, as if she had hit him. She would like to hate him, the gods know that is all she wants. The truth is she cannot. _You can hate someone you loved, but you cannot stop loving that person even when you hate him._

"You must understand that I had no choice."

"I understand, yes." The weirwood looks at them with that wise wisdom that is always easier to find in Bran’s face. If in the heart tree is impregnated with melancholy, however, in her brother has a cynical and apathetic aftertaste. Watching Bran is like watching in the abyss, a vacuum scarily similar to the Moon Door. "I understand and see the man you've become, that you’re no longer the same person. My brother is dead and you… you're nothing to me." With a deferential nod to accompany the insolence of her words, Sansa turns her back and moves away.

 _You're nothing to me._ The words rumble in her head, ugly and cruel.

His voice, the desperate tone when he said he had no choice.

The tears leave glowing lines on her cheeks. Sansa doesn’t care to dry them. She walks with her head high, stepping quickly.

_You must understand that I had no choice._

_You're nothing to me._

_You must understand that I had no choice._

_You're nothing to me._

She has had enough. Enough with stay apart as others act and play the game in the sunlight. Enough with keep a back seat and observe at things passively. The time of the choices is over. Now it's time to act.   

 


	2. Chapter 2

Secrets are a lethal weapon, so they have to be handled with caution. Sansa knows this well. As she knows just as well that truth can be equally insidious, especially if it is a painful and unexpected truth whose knowledge, entrusted in the wrong hands, could overwhelm the fate of more than one war.

She can't imagine how it has to be for Bran. All that power, all that knowledge. _Traveling in the cracks of time, walking over the years like a ghost, crossing them like a splinter of crazy light, without knowing rest or respite, or remembering what fatigue is, invisible and hidden from the sight of men of the past and the present and the future._ To see everything that is history and legend, to be part of everything, to lose himself in the immensity of something that is infinite and inexhaustible. How it has to feel the drop that joins the stream and then the river and eventually connects itself to the sea? Will it still remember that it was a drop in the beginning or will it be just part of the sea that brings together the currents, which is origin and end? 

It seems like a curse: to meet people whom he has heard since he was a child, people whom he only admired for having known them through the stories of Old Nan, all the people he loved and lost without being able to interact with them. To observe the coming seasons, fallen and short and deafening like the clash of weapons, the excitement of all those emotions and those lives that glitter around him. And when of those lives, of those violent and sweet passions and sufferings, remain bones and ashes and the sleep of the senses? How can one feel himself again, human, _real_ , after such an experience? And how cannot such an experience rewrite the person he has been before?

Eventually, the answer can be only one. A drop stops being a drop and becomes sea. Bran has ceased to be the brother she knew, but he didn't cease to be her brother, and as hard as it is to accept, it is a price she is willing to pay to bring him back to her side. 

 

* * *

 

Convincing Bran to collaborate requires patience and stubbornness.  

Sansa believed that she would never be able to glean the courage and the strength needed to get used to Bran's milky stare, his head pouring into the sky in rapture, his throat exposed to the carved face of the heart tree as if he was offering himself to the gods to honor pact and beliefs as old as the stars. Now that view doesn’t scratch her mask of composure. It doesn’t shake her breath or beat her heart like a caged bird.

Habit moves her footsteps. It is always a habit pushing her to sit on one of the exposed roots. It is love and fear, however, and a feeling that is both, powerful and absolute, to bend her forward and urging her to take Bran's hands between hers. His hands are as cold as the stones of the rampants, but they retain an echo of heat, and whenever they are crossed by a spasm, Sansa accentuates the grip. _Come home, brother,_ sings her blood _._ She hopes that wherever he is, Bran can hear her, that her prayers can return him to her. _Come home, brother. Fight your battles and then come home._

Bran's body is rigid to the point that she fears it may break. Then, abruptly, stiffly, he relaxes against the back of the chair. Bran wrings her hands and when his eyes go brown again, Sansa breathes a sigh of relief.

 _Welcome back_ , says her little, sad smile, but her lips move to make other words. "Tell me," she says. "Tell me what you've seen."

Bran blinks slowly, as if he wants to shake off the numbness that passes through him. When he speaks his voice is solemn, his eyes contemplate a point beyond her shoulders with a meditative expression. "This time I pushed myself to Eastwatch. There was a storm."

For a moment Sansa sees through the eyes of the crow. Beneath her a land of ice, the cold of the wind that burns the flesh and anesthetizes the senses. She feels the excitement of flying. She imagines slamming the wings against the resistance and the fury of the air currents that flatten her feathers. 

"I saw Jon." 

She returns herself. She waits for Bran to continue, even if curiosity is killing her, sharp bites like the iron needles that Ramsay used to pierce in her arms for entertainment.

"Sansa." For the first time since his return, Bran shows her a different expression, one that remembers a true feeling. "Jon bent the knee." 

Sansa leaves Bran's hands suddenly. She brings them to her lap and interlocks them to hide the frustration. "No." She struggles to swallow the tang that filled her mouth. She realizes with a moment's delay that she bitted the inside of her cheek with so much strength to bleed it. "No. He would never do it," she tries to say with a security she doesn’t possess. "Not Jon." _He_ _promised me._ But this is not the promise he made, right? The promise was to protect her. _Nobody can protect anyone._ The thought has never been so angry or more real. 

"That's what I saw." _That's what happened._  

"Why?" 

Not that it changes the situation, but knowing what pushed Jon to give up the independence of the North, the reason behind his capitulation seems to be the only thing that can prevent her mind from falling apart.

If Bran is surprised by her question, he doesn’t show it. There is a flick, fast and elusive in his eyes, as if he is watching the memory of one of the scenes he witnessed. "She saved him, losing one of her dragons doing it."  

Sansa frowns. Bran doesn’t avoid her gaze, but there is something vigilant in the way he hesitates before speaking, as if hanging, that invites her to reflection. Now she knows that is wasn’t for lack of affection that Bran avoided talking to her in the first few weeks, but for kindness and courtesy, those who belonged to Mother. Was it to protect her from this?  

Another pause. "He is in love." 

 _Oh_. So this is the feeling. How can a heart be broken and keep hammering hard in the chest? How can one survives? _In the same way you did the first, second and third time. Going forward. One breath at a time._  

"What else did you see?" She doesn’t recognize the sound of her own voice, weak and heavy together. She recognizes, however, the pulsation of the blood in her ears, that in the quiet of godswood resounds impossibly erratic.

"War is here and we must be ready. Now more than ever." 

"We will be when the enemies come. The men we have-" 

"They will not be enough." 

"Then we'll find others." She knows she has just said something fundamentally naive. Jon's betrayal is too recent, too vivid to let her reason with the usual lucidity. Every breath made without bursting into sobs is itself a victory. _She thought she had wept all her tears at King's Landing, but there are tears that cannot be seen and wounds that nothing can heal._ Losing Jon is one of these wounds. It's like losing Lady all over again. It's like seeing her father's death by Ilyn Payne's hand. It's like the Red Wedding. It's like Arya’s look, full of disgust and sneering, when she showed her Cersei's note, written by her own hand. It's the distance between her and Bran. It’s the solitude that lives in her shadow.

"Yes," his brother says, catching her by surprise. "You will."  

"How?"  

"I don't know," Bran admits. There is the illusion of a humorous smile on his lips, but then Sansa blinks, dumbfounded, and the impression is gone. "I cannot go further. But know this. You are stronger than you think and you will be able to prove it before the end."  

Sansa wants it to be true, but doubt is friend of insecurity. No matter what she does. _Part of me will always be that silly little girl who loved sweetness and beautiful things, music and dance and colorful clothes like flower petals._

"Don’t tell Arya." She cannot cross Bran's eyes. It will break her. Arya has such high expectations, the confidence she puts in Jon is unconditional. 

 _So was mine,_ she thinks with a stab of pain. _Until today._

 


	3. Chapter 3

"Why do you hate him?" Bran asks.

Sansa doesn’t answer, not with words at least. Her eyes shrink away, distant, lost in the enormity that lies within the men and makes them human.

In the twilight that advances her face appears sharp and hard, but also vulnerable and young. Her lips narrow in a smile he would never have wanted to see again, not on Sansa. That smile is the armor she wears before each battle. It’s a smile of circumstance, courteous and without heat, empty. A smokescreen. A trap for rabbits. _And lions and roses and wolves and dragons._ How many were scourged by that smile, by the polite words, exquisite lies and insincere assertions, accompanying it?

You can keep your honor even in defeat. You can behave with dignity even when you are at the end of the world and everything you believed a dread returns from the depths of your memory to make you relive your childish fears. Sansa is the last bastion of the decency and the morality of the world they knew. And he must know. _He must._ He has to understand. Understanding comes from knowledge and knowledge is the vestiges of his power, of the man he has become.

Now he has the means, the skills. No notions, no circumstance, no occurrence is out of reach for his sight. Nothing escapes his gaze.

His eyes roll back in his head and _see_.

 _The covered bridge that connects the Great Keep to the armory. Two people walk side by side, planning, discussing, learning to know each other afresh and for the first time, learning to protect, listen, and trust each other._ To love.

 _The sept. There is a woman kneeling in front of the carved mask of the Warrior, who prays for her husband’s return from war. She is a southron in every way, even though she wears fur coats and heavy clothes, even though her appearance is more austere than what one would expect from a polished lady of the riverlands._ _Bran stretches out a hand to touch his mother's protruding belly._ Robb _, he thinks with a stab and closes his eyes._

 _He reopens them and he is in the sept again, only at a different time. The God's masks have been burnt, but the little altar is still there. In front of it, concentrated in prayer, there is a woman who is the spitting image of Catelyn Stark. Sansa has her eyes closed, her hands clasped, and a resolute expression as she prays for the safety of the only family she thinks remains to her._

_The courtroom. The table where Sansa is sitting is packed with maps, courier reports, detailed inventory of the weapons and the food at their disposal and of all that's needed to survive what looks like the worst winter ever. Brienne passes next to him and in an involuntary reflex, Bran moves aside. Sansa has her gaze fixed in the void, while touches her chin with her fingers. She seems absent, but Bran can almost hear_ _t the laborious buzz of her brain. She just sent away her only ally. Her own sister is hostile to her. Her enemies weave deception against her. And Jon is still far away, at the court of the foreign queen. Loneliness_ _holds her in a vicelike grip_ _._ So alone. So strong. So beautiful.

 _The armory. He sees her stop in front of the weapons made with the dragonglass sent from Dragonstone. Bran was there when the wagons that carried it came. He saw Sansa crossing the courtyard in a hurry, holding the hem of her skirts with both hands, trying to affect composure_ _and avoiding to quiken her pace too blatantly towards the hooded man at the head of the expedition. He saw her stand in front of the horse', grasp the reins and stretch outward to cling to the man's hand. He saw her joyous smile go out as the last ray of the dying sun, and the surprise and the disappointment spread out in her wide open eyes, hardening her face._

 _Now is the after and the after is in the armory. Sansa looks at the weapons lined up against the walls. There is something that hurt observing the resigned indignation in her clear eyes while she contemplates them, the quiet determination in the curve of her sulky mouth, her frowned eyebrows, the sadness embracing her figure as the romantic character of one of the ballads that she once appreciated so much._ _The young blacksmith carefully follows her movements from his post next to the forge. It was him who delivered Jon's short message to her. Sansa still has it with her, folded carefully in one of the gown pocket._

I send you weapons and men, with the conviction that you will know how to make good use of it. _Weapons and men, but not himself. Jon is at King’s Landing, with the Queen whom he has chosen to serve._

Bran has seen enough. He spied in his sister's heart and got the answer he was looking for. It should be enough. He has seen frustration, but also melancholy and desire and jealousy. Not the hate he was looking for. And yet, it should be enough.

Not yet, he thinks. Not yet. I did not see everything. Something is missing. 

_The goodswood. The light morning light. The heart tree. Two figures entangled in a desperate and daring embrace, similar to the one that Arya and the blacksmith exchanged in the yard the same day the Hound arrived._

_Jon's pleading and tormented expression, his body stretched out toward hers in search of reassurance. Sansa's apparent will to provide him the comfort he needs. The naturalness with which she takes his hair off his forehead in a loving and kind caress, to extinguish part of the anguish that afflicts him. A gesture so intimate and intrinsic of feeling that Bran almost has to divert his gaze. The pure and soft light, almost dazzling, in her eyes when he turns her palm and kisses it gently. When Sansa presses her lips against his, it’s the consolidation of something old and just and instinctive and ancestral. Fire and ice. Wolf and dragon. An old prophecy that comes true._

Bran blinks. He doesn’t know how long he has been away. Meanwhile, the twilight changed and dwindled into night. Instead, Sansa’s broken smile has not disappeared. The winter stars are reflected in her sad eyes, just as in the pond at their feet. She has snow crystals scattered in her hair and Bran would like to be able to go back and rewrite the past only to free her from that burden. He would like to be the knight whom he hoped to become as a child and save Sansa from the fate that awaits her. Because even though he has not seen it yet, he can trace the track with extreme clarity. The prospective breaks his heart. 

"Now you know why." Sansa's voice is a whisper in the silence, barely audible, but impossible to ignore.

Yes, now he knows. It’s not hate. It was never hate, but her absolute inability to feel it. 

 

* * *

 

Arya is in the broken tower, her back resting against the stone arch of what once was a window and not a jerk in the sky, before a thunderbolt caused its collapse. The right leg hangs from the sill, while with an abrasive stone she sharpens the dagger knife that Bran has given to her.

To see her like this, the stern and concentrated profile without the corrugated resentment that she bears with her, Arya resembles so much Father and Jon. So much that look at her is like breathing smoke.

She must have heard her coming, after all she has the keen hearing and the quick reflections of the wolf. To the wolf belong also her sudden and lightning snaps, the nimble agility with which she moves, elegant and solid and dangerous. Always to the wolf belongs her ferocity and thirst for blood. As Bran's conscience is burdened by his role as the Three-eyed raven, Arya's mind is burdened by a past she cannot forget, that she _doesn’t want_ to forget. Her list of death is a proof.

"What brings the Lady of Winterfell here? It must be something important to get dirty on your pretty dress."

Sansa has an acerbic remark on the tip of her tongue - she might point out that her dress was already dirty after an afternoon spent supervising the work for prepare the food reserves to be kept in the ice-house - but her smug attitude, instead of arousing her anger, sorts the opposite effect. Worn out by her eagerness and animosity, embittered by their continual scorns, she clutches her lips in a tired, desolate grimace and turns her back, ready to move away from that unjustified anger. But it is not unjustified, not really. _Don't you remember when you used to call her horseface? When did you laugh at her with Jeyne? You weren’t a good sister. And you know why. Say it. Admit it_.

"I was jealous of you."

The noise of the blade against the stone ceases, replaced by a pensive silence, one full of questions. A faint ray of hope. 

"When we were small," Sansa clarifies, turning and crossing Arya's intense stare, studying her pale face empty of any expression. And to avoid misunderstandings, again, with a louder, somewhat safer voice, she repeats: "I was jealous of you." 

Arya fathoms her with sharp eyes, but there is a glimmer of confusion and it’s already something, it’s already better than acrimony. "I don't believe you." 

Sansa feels a tenderness that is almost unbearable. _No, how could you?_   "I'm not lying. I was jealous of you. Or rather, of what you represented." 

Arya is oddly quiet, a clear invitation to continue and unconsciously, Sansa steps forward, then calls herself a fool. It's not just physical distance what separates her and Arya, but years of misunderstanding, years of quarrels, years of skirmishes. 

She let her eyes wander through the space, lingering on the vines of poison ivy burned by cold, on the deadwood piled in a corner, and finally on the courtyard that can be seen behind Arya. _Courage. Be sincere. Courage._ Sansa takes a deep breath, before speaking. "You were so different from me, Arya. So proud, noisy, independent. So true. You didn’t want to be a lady, you never wanted to become one. All the lessons that Septa Mordane imparted us to you were futile. You have always refused the role others wanted you to play. You wanted to be yourself and you didn’t care about anyone's judgment. And our father loved you dearly for that." _Because you reminded him the sister he had lost and represented the possibility of redeeming for the mistakes he had committed with her._ "And for the very same reason, I envied you. Only that at that time I was too stupid to understand how to contain what I felt so-" 

"So you acted like a bitch."  

"You were also hateful with me. You always acted out of spite to me. It was as if you wanted to make me angry. You were exasperating."  

"As you were with me. Always telling me what I could or couldn't do-"  

"Like that one time you hid a frog in my sewing basket or-"  

"Turning your nose up and frowning upon me-"  

"When you exchanged the lavender flask with which I washed my hair with garlic essence!"  

"Spying and complaining to Mother." 

Unexpectedly, Sansa bursts out laughing. That particular memory, instead of filling her with bitterness, makes her feel a strange, sweet-hearted joy. She remembers how embarrassed she felt when even Mother, the stoic, composed Catelyn Stark, had inhaled deeply through her mouth, and with a wrinkle on her otherwise smooth forehead had strongly advised her to stay confined in her rooms until the smell would blurred. She remembers the repeated baths that Old Nan had forced her into, how she had to wash herself with pieces of apple, lemon and milk for two days in a row. She laughs until her torso appears to be two tighter measurements and she can feel her cheeks burning. She laughs and when Arya begins to laugh too, suddenly the world seems a more tolerable place, and the worries that afflict her are less insurmountable obstacles. There is still hope for them. Two sisters reliving the past, throwing back old mistakes and seeping aside disagreements, recognizing the nature of their contrasting personalities. 

In the end, when the interlude of hilarity gives way to a comfortable silence, Sansa realizes that Arya is looking at her imperscrutably. "You've changed."  

"Who’s not?" Sansa replies calmly. "The season has changed and so I had too."

Arya tilts her head and though nothing in her expression alters, Sansa notes a sudden stiffness in her shoulders. She understands the reason for her turmoil when she asks, "Has he changed too?"

It isn't necessary to specify who she is talking about. 

"Aye, even him," Sansa responds. "Now, every time he talks, his voice is heard. He is respected. He walks with his head high, holding his hand on the sword as if he is ready to go in battle at any time. He has become an authoritarian man, a king, but in him survives the kind boy who gave you that sword." She would like to tell her that sometimes he becomes strangely silent, that his eyes assume the same unhappy expression he had when Mother addressed him with word too harsh or severe, that he still smiles rarely, but when it happens it's like watching the snow for the first time. She would like, but something retains her and instead she finds herself saying, "He looks like Father. He is just and honorable and generous." 

Arya nods, as if the picture she outlined was already known to her, but she still wanted a confirmation. "It's unfair that you could meet him and I couldn't." Her tone has returned to be harsh and something inside Sansa contracts like for the echo of an old beating. "You never cared about Jon." 

"It's true, it's unfair. But life is almost always unfair," Sansa says. "Jon was my family when I had lost all hope of having one. I'm sorry he is not here to welcome you, that I am the first person you met. I'm sorry you're disappointed." 

"I'm not disappointed." Arya looks at her as if they are little girls again, as one would look at an idiot, yet the warmth in her eyes is undeniable to be misunderstood. "Not anymore." 

Sansa hopes she's sincere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A last chapter of stall before catapulting us into action. Thank you for your fantastic comments! You are too kind and I love you. I will answer as soon as possible, I swear, but I'm not a native speaker and for me it becomes a bit complicated. Sorry!


	4. Chapter 4

They are a sight for the eyes, the Stark of Winterfell. Or rather, the survivors. A cripple and two girls, one believed lost for years and the other held up for as long before she disappeared in nothingness, followed by the accusation of regicide.

The bastard is missing from the appeal. Jaime knows it's just a matter of time - _hours, days, who can say it?_ \- before the King in the North arrives, carrying fire and flames with him and the woman who is the promise of both.

The boy who will never walk again because of him and the two girls that an oath made to a dead woman bound him for honor to protect. All three of them have reason to hate him, and yet it’s not hate what he sees in their cold and stern looks. They are side by side, proud, strong and noble, and despite the weakness that age should inspire, they appear all but vulnerable and helpless. There is something in them that instill a sense of alarm. Old Eddard would be proud of them. The impassiveness with which they let him roll on the frozen floor after the guards have thrown him there, like a beggar, like someone who is untrustworthy. _A perjury sitting on a throne not his own with the blade still dirty of blood, the blood of the king that he had promised to defend._ Yes, old Ned would be proud.

The boy doesn’t deign to so much as look at him, he seems barely aware of his presence in the room. Others, less observant, might think it is for fear. Jaime knows that's not the case. Something sharp and dark touches his consciousness, clings to his bones and tells him he is not scared but the exact opposite. He is disinterested.

Of the two girls, the thin one looks at him like a wolf with the prey, with hunger and provocation. Her eyes mock him and at the same time incite to violence, they are a call to poured blood and to what has still to flow. The cheeky curve of her smile, the disregard with which she has a hand resting on the sword at her side. The presumption of young people, the arrogance of those who believe to be invincible. Something that also belonged to him once. _Attack me_ , it seems to say that smile of wolf and hunter. _You will not see the light of the next day. Attack me and I could surprise you. Attack me and you will assuage my hate. Attack me and you'll be pierced by my blade._

The biggest surprise comes from the last of the Stark, the last of the litter, the least dangerous, the most unlikely survivor.

The last time he saw her she was his brother's wife. A pale and unhappy little girl with eyes injected with blood for the many nights she spent walking in the land of daydreams. A weak and silly girl, a trophy at the table of the powerful and the victorious.

Now Sansa Stark has nothing to do with the girl who populates his memories. Maybe only the pale and bloodthirsty colors. Yet even in those there is something totally different. At King's Landing, in the crashing light of the bloody stones of the ramparts and towers, between lace and jewelery and the stinging confusion of the Court, Sansa, albeit precious, was just one face as another. Pretty, diligent. Nothing more. Just a puppet to arrange, a mind to maneuver, deprived of her own will. Far from the South and its machinations, in the grave and deafening silence of winter, surrounded by the walls built by her ancestors, Sansa is a woman. Dressed in dark gray, no frills and useless nuts, everything in her denotes security, dignity, order.

Unlike Bran and Arya Stark, Sansa doesn’t have a puzzling and creepy aura. She is the quintessence of convenience, of correctness, the measure of modesty and virtue. Nevertheless, her eyes are the most intimidating. Curious and unimpressed, they create a disturbing contrast in an otherwise attractive and mild face. Where Brandon Stark and Arya Stark are the sight and the arm of the Stranger, Sansa Stark has carved its contradictory nature. Right and implacable, cruel and impartial, deaf to prayers and supplications.

And Jaime knows that the biggest wrong that his family has done to the Stark lives in her. Not in Brandon, not in Arya. It lives in Sansa, the girl with the broken wishes, the girl who has been injured and wrecked. And seeing in her disillusioned eyes, he passes over the extraordinary resemblance with Catelyn Stark and finds the pieces of the boy he was, that he killed by piercing Aerys, burying his hopes of glory. He rediscovers the ruins of himself, his old aspiration to become a respected knight, celebrated for his heroic deeds.

He finds the last fragments of honor and the desire to prove to that boy that there is still a choice.

When he pulls out the sword and lays it at the foot of the Stark, he is watching Sansa Stark, putting the sword that once belonged to her father at the service of her family.

Sansa placates with an unmistakable gesture her sister from coming forward to pierce him where he stands. A hand on Arya's elbow to hold her, Sansa turns to Bran with an unfathomable expression. Not a word, not a breath passes between the two. Bran doesn’t blink. Then a brief nod of the head is enough to answer any tacit request that she has put to him. Arya snorts, refitting the sword and steps back, returning to the initial position at the side of her sister. She seems frustrating and disgruntled for the turn of events.

Sansa, on the contrary, seems to relax imperceptibly. When she collects her father's sword for the investiture, she represents the emblem of the past and of what the future holds.

When she pronounces the words, serious and authoritarian, it’s like review Ned Stark's return from the grave. And when she smiles, caustic and pungent, pointing out that it's only right that her father's sword has returned to serving their house, Jaime throws his head back and bursts into an incredulous laugh.

* * *

"You married a Bolton!" Arya screams. She knows she's unfair, but she doesn’t care. She wants Sansa to contradict herself, to break down, to stop being the perfect Lady. If the idea wasn’t painfully puerile, Arya would think that's because she wants her sister back. Her sister, not this regal and composed creature that has ice in her veins.

For a moment something in Sansa seems to crack. A shadow of repulsion and guilt and disgust distorts her refined traits. "I didn’t have a choice." Sansa sighs and the track of horror disappears, but not the sudden hardness in her tone. "Not everyone had the luxury of an easy escape. For five years I was surrounded by monsters, captive of our enemies. I had to forget who I was, I had to abandon my own name, deny my blood, my family. I knew nothing but pain and shame. They gave me as bride against my will, sold me to the best bidder. I was used and set as an object. And despite the humiliation, I chose to live, I chose to fight. Don’t just condemn me because my battles have been different from yours or seem miserable compared to what you had to deal with. Don’t despise me because the weapons I own are not like yours."

"Weapons?" If Sansa is good at concealing, for Arya to pretend it's a natural act like breathe. "A smile and a bit of mawkishness, what kind of weapons are they?" She questions cruelly. No one could imagine the effect Sansa's words provoked in her. The bile that she feels in her throat, the sour sensation at the pit of the stomach, and the thirst for death that nothing can fulfill.

"Enough weapons to win an army and claim our home," Sansa says. "Enough to save Jon's life when it was necessary."

"No one offers anything unless has the hope of getting a compensation. What price has been agreed upon? What did you have to promise in return?"

As was foreseeable, she sees her stiffen. "This doesn’t have to concern you."

"Don't treat me like I'm stupid!" Arya says through her teeth. "Don’t believe I don’t see what happens. That man wants you and the way he looks at you is disgusting!"

"And?" Sansa puts one hand up to her forehead, in a strangely disarming gesture, which reveals what Arya already knew. Sansa is tired and the purple circles around her eyelids are a proof of it. "What should I do, Arya? Should I throw him out of the keep? Dismiss him and so turn the Valley against us? Based on what accusations?"

"Jon left you in charge! You could, if you only wanted to!"

"Yes, and I cannot betray his trust, endangering an alliance that is precious to us. I don’t feel affection, even respect, for Littlefinger. I have every reason to detest him and yet we need him, his support. We are in war and wars are won by reasoning, not letting us be influenced by personal feelings."

Arya would like to be furious with her for the right reasons, not for her air of superiority, but for the lightness with which she mentions the threat of a sneering man who would be so easy to get rid of. Everything she can think of, however, are the wrong reasons. The fact that Sansa doesn’t allow her to compete as in the past, but that she hinders her even in this, only serves to make her more angry.

In the end it doesn’t matter whether it's right or wrong. Being angry with Sansa is one of the few things that remind her of childhood, making her feel more like the girl she no longer is.

* * *

"You sent me away." Brienne's voice, so dear and loyal, doesn’t keep traces of sorrow or rancor. "Why?"

Sansa runs her fingers in one of the embrasure. They are on the fortified walls, the noise of their footsteps is dampened by the layer of snow that whitewashed the keep during the night. "You are my sworn sword, but you are also my eyes and my ears. I needed you at King’s Landing on my behalf."

"I thought your eyes and ears were Bran."

Sansa takes the hit with grace, as always. "Sometimes it's difficult for Bran to prioritize. My brother tends to be protective, to exclude information he fears could hurt me. With you I know this will never happen." The cold made numb the tip of fingers with which she touched the stone. She rubs her fingertips each other to give them a semblance of heat. The same insensitivity has reached her lips and nose. "You met the queen."

Brienne doesn’t ask her who she's referring to. Her nod of confirmation urges Sansa to ask the question that had torture her since she came back. Not about the numerical strength of the men, not about Cersei's empty promises, not even about the queen who defeated the Lannister's army by herself, burning them all. No, what she wants to know -

"The King is fine," Brienne says kindly and the sadness in her eyes is a mild hint as the memory of her mother's caresses.

Sansa nods, unable to interlock the other woman's gaze. "Good," she says. She tries to not think about what Bran told her a week ago in the goodswood. To not focus on the strange burning that it causes in her chest. "Good," she repeats. Her fingers are warm, something else inside her it's not.

* * *

Finding Arya is easy. Each of them is learning to set themselves back in their home, trying to rebuild the bridges that time has broken. Bran is at ease in the goodswood, where loneliness is a pleasant truce in comparison to the continuous coming and going of men in the keep and where he is not forced to pretend concern expect for her and Arya. In her moments of freedom, she is divided between the goodswood and the sept, where, despite the corrosive smell of burnt still permeating the walls, sometimes she is able to grasp her mother's floral aroma, to feel the rustling noise of her skirts, the pitching tone of her voice as she raises a hymn of prayer in front of the carved mask of the Warrior and the Mother.

Arya's favorite place is not the armory, but the broken tower where she found her the first time. Behind her order the roof has been repaired, the stairs reinforced, the cracks have been adjusted. Sansa feels more serene, knowing that her sister's refuge is no longer a place that could collapse on her head. Now it would be nice to add a carpet and a chair and maybe hang a tapestry -

"Don’t do that," Arya says, without looking up from the blade she is sharpening.

"What?"

"This place is mine. You will do nothing more than what you have already done."

"I could make it more comfortable," Sansa suggests.

"That's enough for my taste," Arya replies stoically.

Sansa rolls her eyes.

"I've seen you," Arya says and finally raises her head and sets aside her dagger. "What do you want, Sansa?"

"What makes you think I want something?" She says in return, defensively.

"The last time you came here."

Sansa frowns. The last time she came there, she asked for help to kill Littlefinger. It's strange to think about it. Think of Arya's expression, so guarding, and compare it to what she has now, so straight. She is curious to know what kind of expression she will do when she will meet Jon. If she will - _it's enough._

"You're right," she admits. "I'm here to ask another favor."

"Oh?" Arya raises an eyebrow. "Go on. This conversation begins to please me."

"I want you to teach me to fight."

Unexpectedly, Arya doesn't make any jokes. She just stares at her with the strange immobile look she often shares with Bran. After a moment, she asks, "Why?"

Sansa could explain what it means to feel helpless, at the mercy of others. She closes her eyes and it seems to her that each of the faded scars that cover her body has reopened. She can hear Joffrey's cruel laughter, Ramsay's breath on her neck. The sensation of the blade against the skin, which squats and cuts and - She _could_. She could explain it. _I don’t want to_ , she realizes. It's for compassion and pride and something different, an unpleasant and penetrating feeling that is more intense than anger and less strong than hatred. _This pain is mine to bear._

Sansa joins her hands on the bust and straightens her head to face the obvious interest in Arya's dark eyes, glowing as coal pieces. "To be free."

Arya doesn’t desist. "Why not Brienne?"

"Brienne loves me." A grimace of contempt corrugates her sister's forehead and she wants to smile at that jealousy. "She doesn’t want anything bad to happen to me. If she could, she would try to protect me also from myself. I don’t need love." Not Brienne's devoted love, not a love that makes blind and deaf to mistakes, she thinks. But a love like Arya’s? A faithful, steadfast love, who knows how to abandon all kindness when it is necessary, even if it hurts? "I need you, Arya. I need my sister."

Arya raises her eyes, expressing so explicitly disbelief and doubt that she suppresses the instinct of taking her in her arms as Mother used to do after something bad happened, after every nightmare or quarrel.

"I'll do it," Arya says and tactfully Sansa pretends to not notice the way her sister's fingers tremble imperceptibly around the dagger's handle. "You will come here every day at the hour of the nightingale." Preventing her next question, Arya explains with impatience, "We have to work on your senses. You will learn to move and react promptly to danger. Darkness plays for our benefit. Making things harder at first, I'm helping you to make it easier. I know it makes no sense-"

"I trust your judgment." _I trust you._

Arya nods abruptly, before returning to sharpen the blade and in the face of that implicit bid to leave, Sansa moves away with a secret smile of contentment.

"Tomorrow. The hour of the nightingale," Arya's voice reaches her on the stairwell. "Don’t be late."

* * *

"They will arrive in three days."

Sansa's fingers, busy to mend, hang on for a moment and the needle could slide out of her grip. She doesn’t lift her head from the patch she is working on - no longer gold and silver threads, but the colors of burnt earth, stormy sky, need and poverty when in the past it used to be an entertainment for her - but can perceive the weight of Bran's eyes on her. _What are you worried about, brother? What do you know? What did you see that you didn't want to tell me?_

There is a secret in the depths of his eyes, a secret he refuses to talk to her, but that he has discussed with Samwell Tarly.

Bran talks about dragons, how one rested on the Seal Rock, triggering the panic of the smallfolk at White Harbor. Arya storms questions about the Northmen that welcomed Jon and Sansa tries to focus on the present scene. On the details that his brother describes indifferently, with no enthusiasm.

Her mind flies away. Flies to the Merman’s Court. If she concentrates enough, she can see Jon sitting at the high table between Lord Manderly and Daenerys Targaryen. He listens and brings the cup of wine to his lips with a distracted smile and tries to pay attention to what is being told. But his eyes are restless on the walls and on the ceiling; they wonder about the finely carved decorations and the creatures of the sea carved in the wood. _Would you think about us then? About the family with whom you would like to share the admiration for that splendor or would she be enough to you?_

 _Jon_ , she thinks. At the same time she sees the smile froze on his lips and the astonishment gives way to a violent emotion, suffering and hope together. His eyes dart into the room as if they are looking for someone.

 _Jon_.

She isn't the only one to notice the change in him. Daenerys's hand leans over Jon's with the familiarity that comes from intimacy. "Jon?" She calls softly. _Oh_ , _so softly_. With tenderness, but also strictness.

And what can she do for him now? What can she give him if not her advice, her loyalty?

"Sansa," Arya calls her.

Sansa comes from her thoughts as from a long sleep. The visions are still dancing on her eyelids vividly: the dance of shadows and lights of the torches on the contours of the wooden figures, the seductive face of the mermaid in the middle of the floor, the turmoil in Jon's austere face, that indefinable and fragile note that she would have wanted to erase with a caress or a kiss.

"Sansa," Arya says with reproach. "What are you thinking?"

 _Why lie?_ "The Merman’s Court," she replies, and Arya's scornful verse no longer has the power to irritate her. Her anger is destined to those who hurt her, to those who denigrate her, to those who betray her. Arya, though offensive and polemical, is family. The skirmishes with her sister, albeit unpleasant, are part of the daily life of her new life.

Bran looks away from the fire. "Wonderful, don't you think?" He asks. In front of her nonplussed reaction, he clarifies, "The mermaid."

Something inside her trembles, the same tremor of dismay that has entangled her in the past, during the first night with Ramsay or just before the battle to regain Winterfell. It’s the awareness of the inevitable.

Arya attends that exchange with frowned eyebrows.

Before Sansa can add anything else, Bran speaks again. "I've seen something else," he says. "Somebody else."

A part of her is grateful to Bran for the loophole he is offering her, another part wants to force him to talk. Does he know what's happening to her? Can he explain the sense of strangeness, the drowsiness she increasingly feel, especially through the night when she allows her mind to wander in empty spaces between one duty and another?

 _You also know it, my dear._ The voice, unpleasantly known, is Littlefinger's. _You know what's happening to you. it's just that you don't want to admit it._

"Who?" Arya asks, moving forward.

"Jaime Lannister," Bran says, and Sansa doesn’t know what's worse: if the callousness with which he just pronounced the name of the man who threw him from a tower when he was a child or Arya's ferocious and rancorous fury, the way she seems to exult at the prospect of yet another death. _Ice and fire._ _And what am I? The blade separating them and joining them, which allows their coexistence._

"When?" Sansa asks.

"Tomorrow," Bran answers.

"We'll be ready," Arya says.

Sansa looks at her hands, thinking quickly. Jaime Lannister could be a valid ally. A Stark ally. Not a Targaryen’s. Someone who can support Arya and Brienne in recruiting and training. A discordant opinion in the choir of Lord's voices. Someone who knows Cersei as much as her, who can foretell her moves.

"I'll kill him for what he did to you," says Arya.

"No one will kill anyone," Sansa remarks. "Not yet."

Arya's eyes flaming. "You cannot-"

" _Not yet_ ," Sansa repeats inexorably. "Bran?"

Bran's eyes shine in the darkness as Ghost’s eyes. "So it must be," he says, and then, turning to Arya, adds, "Valar Dohaeris."

 


	5. Chapter 5

_Parry. Lunge. Lunge. Parry. Parry. Lunge. Lunge. Parry._  
  
"The elbow must be lower. Keep it close to the body. Otherwise you offer an opening to your opponent's attacks. Feet fast. Gaze fixed on the enemy. Lined shoulders. That's right."  
  
Arya's hints are quick, demanding. Her sister is an intransigent teacher, but Sansa didn't expect anything less. It's what she wanted after all.  
  
She turns around her like a big cat, studying her from the spots where the light is dim. In the shadows she is an indistinct shape. She can only see the tapered and athletic contours of her body.  
  
Sansa follows the instructions as much as possible, moving within the boundaries of the small circle circumscribed by the candles resting on the floor. The space is limited, her movements are contained and reduced to the indispensable. Sweat draws sticky and glowing rivets along her back and on the nape of the neck. The muscles of her arms burn for the unusual effort they are subjected.  
  
"No, not like that."  
  
Arya strikes her knees with the stick she holds against her waist and Sansa bites her lower lip, holding her breath. It's not the first time. Judging by the disapproval in Arya's cutting voice when she corrected her, it will not be the last either.  
  
"What was wrong this time?" Was it the posture? The position of the feet? Something in the way she is holding the blade? Did she move too slowly?  
  
Arya doesn’t respond immediately. "You didn’t anticipate my attack," she finally replies and hits her again.  
  
That is followed by a burst of blows. The offensive is quick and decisive, impossible to predict and comes from all sides. Sansa tries to ward off the stabs as best she can, failing miserably.  
  
Arya strikes mercilessly, without restraining her strength. Every lunge is accompanied by a pang of pain and every lament dies in her throat, not reaching her lips. The next morning every hit will be marked by purple bruises on her already injured skin.  
  
Learning how to divert seems impossible. Arya is a formidable adversary, yet in the half-light it isn't the long face of her sister that she sees. Arya's features deform, turning into something horrible and grotesque. From the chinks of pitch darkness, spying her, there are the faces of Cersei and Joffrey and Ramsay and Lisa and Petyr. The faces of her enemies. The faces of the knights of the Kingsguard. Of the monsters. Of the nightmares. But there are other faces. Faces that she believed lost forever. The face of Father and Mother, of Robb and Rickon, of Septa Mordane, of Master Luwin, of Ser Rodrick, of all the ghosts that inhabit the chambers of Winterfell.  
  
Sansa focuses on the beat of her heart, on the broken sound of her breathing.  
  
They engage a new dance that seems to go on for hours. She knows it's just the beginning. From that night a new phase of her training starts. From that night it gets real.

* * *

The parade that escorts the return of the King in the North to Winterfell is pompous. It’s out of tune with the austerity of the castle, with the hunger and the misery that have stripped the borders of the keep, that have already reached Winter town. Nearly every day for most of the month, she has been forced to open the northern door to gather in the smallfolk and offer safety to those seeking refuge. It’s out of tune with the privations, with the condition of indigence to which the imminent war has already exposed them. It’s out of tune with him.  
  
Sansa observes critically the stateliness of the procession, the massive retinue of the dragon queen. She doesn’t know what to think. She knows what she doesn’t want to think about, though. The figures in the head that go side by side, as a united front.   
  
The cacophony of the armies is regularly interrupted by screams of incitement, screams of battle. The exhilaration of the men on horseback is terribly misplaced in the snowy context, especially alongside with the solemnity of the Northmen.  
  
"Dothraki," suggests Samwell Tarly in her ear, leaning forward and Sansa tries not to concentrate about the black tales that accompany them. A trail of destruction and blood, of looting and violence.  
  
"Aren’t they cold?" Gilly asks, and points out the long ranks of men that settle the infantry. Their skin is as dark as the juniper bark. They don’t wear armors, but simple black patented leather guards. Something in them reminds her the Night’s Watch.  
  
With a wrinkle on her forehead, she weighs up the unreasonable amount of poorly dressed men. She will have to mobilize all the women in the keep to prepare an equipment that suits the harsh winter temperatures.  
  
The grates are lifted and the large oak doors open with a squeak. From the top of the station she chose as point of observation, Sansa sees Jon and the queen achieve the lord's deployment in the courtyard.  
  
Jon dismounts and waits for the queen to do the same. Both are immediately approached by their attendants. Sansa recognizes Ser Davos and out of the corner of her eyes she notices Ser Jaime moving nervously behind her. She doesn’t have to follow the direction of his gaze to understand the object of that sudden demonstration of interest. Towering and robust and similar through and through to one of the great knights of the ballads with whom she grew up, Brienne of Tarth is heading with long strides towards her sister, concealed in a recess. Alongside her, Gendry Waters stands in front of the warrior woman, but he is shaken off by the elbow of an annoyed Arya who moves forward to cross her arm with that of the other woman in an unmistakable gesture of welcome.  
  
Sansa's attention comes back to Jon. She sees him looking greedily for someone in the crowd, making his way, preceded by Ghost. Facing the direwolf, the crowd opens like the bifurcations of a river and doesn’t dare approach the king. The silence in the yard is so saturated with expectation and tension that the only distinctive noises are the lament of a newborn and of the flags lashed by the fury of the wind. Sansa barely hides a smile when she realizes that predictably Ghost is driving him towards Arya.  
  
Now they are standing, facing each other. It’s a picture already seen, a situation already experienced. A recalled memory that has the flavor of an unconscious fantasy. And in spite of this, it seems to her that the hole in her chest can suck her at any moment. Sansa looks at them, clenched her fists in the folds of the cloack. Then slowly, so slowly to be almost unsustainable, he stretches his arms to pull Arya into a hug that swallows her. Her sister would disappear completely if it wasn't for half of her face, crushed against his shoulder. It's not like their hug. It's not like the one she and Jon exchanged at Castle Black. It's not like the one she and Arya exchanged in the crypt. It is something different, less complicated, but intense and burdensome with unspoken words, too many conflicting emotions.  
  
When Ghost begins to whine – Ghost that was named after his taciturn nature - Sansa raises the hood of the cloak, pretending that it is for a sudden gust of restless wind and not for the tenderness she is unable to erase from her face, her glistening and troubled eyes.  
  
When Jon and Arya break the embrace, their smiles are genuine and so bright to rival the light refractions that occur in the glass garden during sunny days.  
  
She turns her back as she saw them begin to talk feverishly to each other, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. And watching them is like go back in time, a dip in the past, in the dearest memories of childhood. The man of integrity and the fierce girl retreat, replaced by the shadows of a boy with a tormented spirit and a stinging little girl. It's a strange kind of pain that afflicts her, she thinks, sweet and sharp, but not in a terrible way, not so excruciating.  
  
She is already turned and therefore she cannot see that at the umpteenth of Jon's questions, Arya pointed upward in her direction and that his eyes immediately raised where she was the instant before, searching her.  
  
All he finds of the Lady of Winterfell is the austere profile of a tall, hooded woman dressed in blue that is moving away.

* * *

She looks for him in Arya's mitigated eyes. In Sam's anecdotes about the Lord Commander, his best friend, his brother. She looks for him in the gossip of the scullions and the soldiers camped out the walls as if they were under siege. She looks for him continuously and for this reason she doesn’t know peace. She looks for him, but when they find themselves side-by-side in a balcony, both accompanied by the people they trust most and who are loyal to them, she barely deigns him with a nod of greetings and the facade of a smile. She looks for him later, in the courtyard where he is training men. The training of women and children still competes to Brienne and Arya.  
  
Sansa looks at him secretly, as Littlefinger once looked at her. He has not changed physically. His somber appearance is the same, but something else is not. The smile reaches his eyes more easily and there is a calmness in him that she had never seen before. She stops a servant and orders for a refreshment to be brought to the King.  
  
Meanwhile she stays concealed, awaiting. When the woman approaches Jon, carrying a jug and a globet, he strikes the sword into the ground. However, it is not her that pours it for the king. The dragon queen comes forward, handing him the water. Jon smiles at her with tenderness and after a few sips he returns the globet to her. Without looking away from Jon, the queen also drinks from the same spot.  
  
The hand of Sandor Clegane rests on her shoulder with rude kindness, as if to push her away. Sansa nods, without looking at him. She has seen enough.  
  
That night, in the broken tower, her strength is doubled. When she closes her eyes, the scene she witnessed repeats itself unceasingly. Whenever she thinks about it something inside her crashes. Sansa turns it into aggression and her line of attack has never been so rough or swift.  
  
When she affects her sister's defense, coming almost to touch her forearm before Arya moves at the last moment, her sister is as surprised as her. She assesses her with a slow, lazy smile and then starts to attack. Faster than ever. More energetically.  
  
At the end of the workout, every part of her, every bone, every injured area in her skin, every scar, every muscle is suffering from it as if had been immersed in hot oil. Sansa kneels on the stone floor, panting and dripping sweat.  
  
Arya stretches out her hand, helping her to get up. "You did good," she says.  
  
Sansa doesn’t smile, but the yelling inside her stop for the first time after what has seemed like an eternity, replaced by apparent quietude.

* * *

The floury light that filters from the fronds of the trees makes the goodswood slightly opalescent. It's like watching the world through a crystal lens. Winter has turned her home into a land of dreams and ghosts, but not of regrets.  
  
Sansa is trying to retain her rage, but it is turning out to be an arduous task. The irritation and annoyance, though, are pale and miserable in comparison to the sense of profound frustration, discontent, disappointment. She swallows the bitter bite like an acrid medicament and faces openly the accusation in Jon's eyes, the supplication they contain.

"Do you think so little of me? You believe it is jealousy or simple anger or-"  _I thought you understood me, that you would see me for the person I became and not that I was_ , she would like to say to him. She shakes her head and continues, frantically, "I'm not angry with you because you bent the knee. I know that in this war every choice you have taken and still waiting for you is impossible."  
  
Jon's mouth is curved in a grimace and his scowl doesn’t flatten. Sansa's eyes linger on the hardened corners of his face before she turn them down quickly, staring at the exposed roots of an oak.  
  
"If you're not angry, then why don’t you look at me?"  
  
_Because I want you and this is killing me. Because you want another and this thought is a slow and atrocious death_.  
  
Sansa remains stubbornly silent and if her knuckles are white as bones against the dark fabric of her dress so much is the strength with which she is clasping her hands, who can call her a liar?  
  
"Sansa." Jon sighs wearily and a sense of guilt is added to the many other feelings in which she seems to drown. "You're doing it now, too."  
  
When Jon's right hand leans gently on her cheek, giving the slightest pressure to persuade her to raise her chin and cross his gaze, Sansa allows herself a moment to enjoy the warmth of that caress before retreating abruptly as if the simple contact burned her.  
  
"Don’t touch me," she murmurs with a raspy voice.  
  
Jon closes his hand in a fist and lowers his arm rigidly. He seems disoriented and hurt by her reaction. "Forgive me."  
  
"There is nothing to forgive," Sansa replies quickly. "I'm not angry with you." Not anymore, at least.  
  
"I disappointed you."  
  
What importance can ever have her thoughts and feelings in this situation? Neither of them prevented him from making decisions that were contradictory to hers before. "You are my King, Jon, but you are also a man," Sansa says, frowning. "Nobody's perfect. You can try to be, but everybody makes mistakes. Even you. I just hope that the day of regrets never comes." For both of us.

* * *

Despite the sweetness of their encounter in the courtyard, Arya is reacting negatively to the fact that Jon really bent the knee. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t want to see the necessity of it. Even when she had shown her the dispatch brought by a raven confirming the news, her reaction had been of rejection and she had reproached stubbornly, "It's not how it looks."  
  
Sansa listens to her recriminations, her eyes fixed on the dying chimneys. She lets Jon give some kind of justification, assuming full responsibility for his actions.  
  
She thinks about Bran who has began to spend his time entirely in the goodswood and whose gaze is now as white as the snow that has been falling steadily for days. He doesn’t sleep, eating only when forced and Sansa has already exchanged a conversation with Sam in that regard. How much can he resist in these conditions?  
  
According to Sam just a couple of months, but if the situation gets worse, then months will turn into days and days into hours _. I didn’t fight against whom I fought and didn’t do what I did to see another brother die before my eyes and my family destroyed. I will not allow it. Not under my watch_.  
  
When Arya comments tartly about how Jon spends his nights and with whom, Sansa becomes gloomy. Ghost, lying at her feet, raises his head and rests his muzzle in her lap. She scratches him distractedly behind his ears, grateful for the physical presence and warmth irradiated.  
  
"He didn’t do anything wrong," she says at last. Both Jon and Arya turn to her, and if Arya looks upset about her intervention in favor of Jon, what's hurting her most is Jon's astonishment. Has he already forgotten their conversation in the godswood? Yet she thought to have been clear when she told him that she understood why he had acted as he did, that she disapproved, but understood.  
  
"Sansa?" He calls her in a low voice, uncertain. She doesn’t mind him.  
  
"You met Daenerys," she says, addressing only Arya. "She wouldn’t be content with anything less. Now is not the time to argue. Winter has come and hangs over us. We must prepare for war. The only hope of survival is to remain united."  
  
It is then that Arya breaks her heart. She breaks her heart cleanly and precisely and devastatingly. In the same way she leads her dance of death, where she traces invisible lines of perfection in the air when she fights with the sword. She breaks her heart, looking at her boldly and the promise in her eyes resembles what she said to her last night. _You're ready for winter_.  
  
"I intend to join the army that will go to the Wall."

* * *

"You have to stop her!"  
  
Jon reaches her in the solar later. Sansa is checking out the list of supplies at their disposal, the calculation Sam has helped to draw on the number of people in the keep. So little food to ration in proportion to the mouths to feed. The situation is likely to become untenable. Ser Davos, on her own insistence, departed for White Harbor, accompanied by Lord Manderly, to try to negotiate a profitable trade with the free cities of Essos before the roads become impractical and travelling is even more difficult.  
  
"She doesn’t listen to me, but she may listen to you," he continues undeterred, and Sansa looks away from the columns of figures and numbers on the writing desk to scrutinize Jon. She is exhausted to the point she doesn’t feel anything outside the languor that weighs her limbs.  
  
It’s the first time in a while she allows herself to look at him so closely and it only causes a mild discomfort. Jon's eyes are reddened and his eyelids are swollen and sleep-deprived, his gait is heavy. In the pallor of his long face, the scars on the right temple and above the left eyebrow stand out as if they are fresh from suture. She remembers Arya's biting comment on his nights, but she shuts it out.  
  
"Nobody can stop Arya. I've never had that power and you..." Sansa takes a deep breath, opening and closing her fingers around the edge of one of the parchments. "You lost it."  
  
For a moment the silence that follows gives her the hope that he will retire to his chambers and leave her alone to lick her wounds. Her hope is vain.  
  
"Do you really care so little?" The sudden hardness that distinguishes the question, his implicit accusation is unexpected, but not surprising. Nonetheless it stings her like a lashing. "Our sister intends to fight against monsters. She might die. Or worse."  
  
Sansa hides a wince. Blue eyes like sapphires, like the velvety petals of the small flowers growing among the graveyard's tombstones just outside the First Keep. Shriveled and cold skin like stone.  
  
For a moment, the horrific prospect of her sister's body on the battlefield, an arrow stuck in her chest, her lifeless eyes staring up blankly, a puddle of frozen blood around her, is such a powerful image that she flinches.  
  
But then Sansa takes control of herself Alain, and it is Arya's voice lulling her nervous wreck, spinning the tear that the vision has caused. Valar Morghulis.  
  
"She might, it’s true," she recognizes and the self-control with which she is explaining that possibility is chilling judging by the horror in Jon's face.  
  
"How can you be so cold?"  
  
But the real question, what he doesn’t have the courage to ask her, is: are you really cold as you want to appear?  
  
"I can because I have to. I have to because I love them and even if I hate to do so, I must leave them free." Free to decide, free to be what they want, to follow the path they chose to go through.  
  
Although it is one that she cannot and will never able to follow, even if it means increasing the risk of losing them in the shadows.  
  
Arya decided to fight and Sansa cannot blame her.  _If I could, I would follow you too. If my conscience didn’t force me to guard our home, I would join you in battle. I would die at your side, with the names of our family on the lips._  
  
Jon doesn’t remark, but his anger is plain as day.  
  
After he left, closing the door behind himself, Ghost gets up from the carpet in front of the fireplace and approaches her. Sansa sinks her face in his thick fur and keeps her eyes shut.

* * *

Bran reappears from the heart of the goodswood two days later and he is so pale and starved that Sansa is divided between the contrasting impulse of embracing him and shaking him forcefully for making her so worried.  
  
Bran emerges from his visions as a scarecrow and the first thing he does is ask for a meeting with Jon.  
  
In the courtroom there are also Sam and Gilly, who holds a dusty book in her arms, her and Arya.  
  
Sansa listens to what Bran has to say and even though her face is of stone, for every word he claims as true her heart begins to beat at a frenzied pace. When Sam confirms Bran’s story, showing them the rehearsing paragraph, Sansa seeks Jon with her eyes.  
  
Jon says nothing, his face suddenly introverted and cloudy. The expression she has seen more and more often, that carefree and hopeful youthful light that he shows in the vicinity of the dragon queen has dropped drastically, extinguishing itself in the remains of annihilated desires and exaltations. In his eyes fight the afflicted boy and the sensible man and it is a torture to see both die under the burden of truth.  
  
Unconciously she makes a step toward him before remembering her place. She tightens her lips, and when Jon leaves the room hunchbacked, she doesn’t follow him, even though everything in her cries out to chase him.  
  
She exchanges a penetrating look with Bran and again, as she has learned to do in moments of difficulty and distress, she repeats to herself.  _This is the way it has to be._  



	6. Chapter 6

Sansa resists one day and one night.

Locked in her solar, she is aware of everything that happens in the keep. Arya is fighting with Brienne and the Hound. Strangely, Bran didn't return to the goodswood. He is in the broken tower and Jaime Lannister is with him. Sansa knows she should be worried about the strange bond between her brother and the former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. She should and she would be if there were no more urgent issues to deal with. Her brothers grew up just like her, far away, and they know how to care for themselves. She has to trust this.

Ghost’s absence is a clear sign that something is wrong. The direwolf rarely abandons her side, preferring her company to that of any other Stark, even his legitimate owner. At the time of need, however, he is with Jon, as it should be.

A howl breaks the silence of the night. Sansa buries her fingers in the chair's armrests. She has made a decision.

She wraps herself in her mother's cloack and blows on the candle near the window, letting the darkness descends upon her.

Against the wall next to the door, sitting on the floor with her son, there's Gilly. The hallway is cold and the torches don't illuminate it enough, but it doesn't seem to matter to Gilly. She knows that are worse things than darkness and a frosty floor.

When Gilly follows her in silence, she is grateful for the solidarity of a woman she has known for a few moons, but that is already gaining her friendship.

* * *

It is the darkest hour the one before dawn.

Sansa knows where to go. She follows Jon's path as if he had left luminescent imprints in the stone floors. In her old rooms, which before to become hers, once belonged to Lyanna Stark. In the crypts, in front of a statue that has seen get on their knees kings and brothers and now a son, and at whose feet she finds a winter rose. In the courtyard, where the breathing ghost of Lyanna reincarnated impales a straw puppet without mercy.

At every stop, Jon's image is alive and present within her.

Finally, when the hug of night has penetrated into her bones, Sansa walks into the godswood, accompanied only by the silvery moonlight. Gilly stayed at the iron gate, along with Sam. ( _He’s not himself,_ Sam warned her with a face full of regret. _He refused to speak to anyone. Even to the queen._

Sansa nodded. _He will not refuse to speak to me.)_

Ghost meets her halfway, making her company for the rest of the trip.

Jon sits on a rock at the foot of the heart tree and looks at his hands as if he doesn’t know what to do with them, how to deal with them. They are covered with scratches and tears. The impression, almost certainly right, is that he has fisted the trunk of a tree. The sword is thrown not too far away. Sansa is not blind. She saw the signs, coming up there. She recognized strokes of sword in the jagged lines marking the bark of the ash trees and the plopars, in the broken branches.

She approaches him, quiet as the ghosts of the dead accompanying her. _Can you see them, Jon? They're all here, along with us. Death has returned them to us._ And turning to them, to the ghosts. _Give me the strength. Help me to be as courageous as you._ What would Robb say? What comforting words would her mother pronounce?

Sansa thinks of her father. She might be angry with him for having lied so long and so well. To guard a secret that has cost everyone so much, that was the stain in his immaculate honor, the cracking in the happiness of her mother’s married life. She could be angry and ultimately the main reason is the pain this secret is now causing to Jon.

“All my life..." Jon keeps staring at his bloody hands. His eyes are empty hollows. "All my life I thought I was an aberration. I represented the infamy of our father and I hated myself for that. I would have liked to hate him, but I never did. The Gods know I never could. The only thing I wanted was to be like him. I wanted to be just and strong and honorable."

 _You already are,_ she would like to tell him and her eyes have got watery against her will. _You already are all these things and so much more._

"Everything I remember is a lie. Everything I've built, everything I am... I'm an impostor. I'll have to tell the Lords. And Daenerys." He swallows with an expression suddenly nauseated. "My aunt. I slept with my aunt." For the first time he makes eye contact.

It is not something new, yet to hear it from his lips, the ease of his admission makes her wince. Obviously Jon misunderstands the motive of her turmoil, associating it with repulsion. He lowers his head again with a sad grimace. "I don’t know who I am anymore," she hears him say in a desolate whisper.

Sansa kneels in front of him and puts her hands upon his, careful not to touch the wounded areas. "You know who you are. Your name is Jon Snow. You've grown up like Father’s son and no matter what's written on a piece of paper, if you're my brother or my cousin. You and me, and Bran, and Arya are all that remains of our family."

Jon leans forward, as if trying to absorb the warmth from her breath and from the words she has just said.

When Jon says in a prayerful tone, "Tell me again," she agrees immediately. _Your name is Jon Snow. You are my family. Nothing and no one can ever change what you are to us._ Once again. And then again and again and again. Sansa repeats the words as if they are the only ones she knows, the only truth that really matters. She repeats them as a promise, the only one she can give to him. She repeats it in a low voice, their faces are pressed together, and the air that one breathes is breathed by the other.

Jon's eyes are closed and his lashes are damp, his skin cold as snow. Sansa picks her hand between his tangled hair in a gentle caress that she hopes is similar to her Mother's. _Everything will be fine. I am here with you._ With the other hand she touches Jon's jaw. The roughness of the beard gives her a strange feeling. It starts to snow and she begins to remove snowflakes from his cheeks with her fingers.

When much later the dawn reaches the heart of godswood, straying their shelter, they are in the same positions.

Jon lets out a long exhale that seems to come from the center of him. When he reopens his eyes, he has a vulnerable expression, but the pain is mitigated by the tenderness with which he is looking at her.

Sadly, Sansa lets him go enough to regain a crunch of self-control on her body. To remember the sensation of the skin when it doesn't mold, of hands when they are empty, of blood when it doesn't boil. No matter how little it has lasted, her body has already memorized the proximity of Jon's body, the way he looks for closeness, as if he isn't used to it and every contact is a pleasant and surprising discovery. Like the tip of his nose was close to the attachment of her hair and she heard him inspired her perfume.

She should get up. It isn't time to indulge in sweetness, though it is comforting to know that she isn't alone, feel it in the depths of her being.

"Sansa," Jon says. He doesn't add anything else. He doesn't need to. He takes her hand, turns it and kisses her palm gently.

Following an impulse of the moment, contradicting the voice that suggests to do the opposite, Sansa brings their clasped hands to her lips and softly kisses his knuckles, where the blood has dried.

With an intake of breath, he crosses her gaze again. There is nothing vulnerable in him anymore, but a fire and a tension and just an inkling of doubt. Her throat has gone dry. She tries to ignore the quickening of her pulse. On the tongue she has the ferrous taste of his blood. She licks her lips.

Jon follows the movement and she trembles. The hesitation is too short to call it that way. Sansa tilts her head and with the slow precision of drunken she rests her mouth against his. At first he doesn't react and the fear of rejection is a knife stuck between her shoulder blades. Then Jon responds to the kiss and everything changes.

The way he is kissing her doesn’t look like Littlefinger’s kisses and Sansa doesn’t make the mistake of even comparing it to any kiss Ramsay has ever given her.

This is how it should be? This languor, and this craving that she feels under the skin for the urgent need to sink into Jon’s cozy warmth, in his perfume, in his taste?

Hands that touch with reverence and desire, with respect and with the kind of right love, one that fills the empty and cold spaces and smashes the unpleasant memories.

It ends too soon. Jon moves away unexpectedly, but being careful to let her go with kindness. Sansa opens her eyes again. She’s light-headed and her breath is stuck in her throat. Jon is staring at her as if he had never seen her before, as he is looking at something wonderful and terrifying at once. His pupils are dilated and he’s short breath like her.

"I'm really a monster," he says, and she falls in despair.

"Jon." She tries to stretch her hand to his wrist, but he refuses her touch like it's poison. "Jon," she says again with her heart that beats madly. _Please. Look at me._

"It was a mistake. We shouldn't have," he says feverishly, refusing to look her into the eyes. "You are my sister. _My sister_ ," he repeats vehemently and Sansa is freezing.

"I know," she says flatly, and maybe the cold she is feeling all of a sudden has reached her voice, because Jon raises his head. His expression is heartbreaking an yearning. For a moment he seems to be in conflict and he moves like he wants to pull her back into his arms. Sansa would like to extend hers to offer the comfort and reassurance he deserves. She longs for hide her face against his shoulder and unleash her tears.

She doesn’t do nothing of this. Instead she stands up with all the grace and dignity of her rank as a woman, a daughter and a sister, as a Stark and the Lady of Winterfell. She arranges the folds of her skirts and makes a perfect curtsey before turning and leaving him alone with his thoughts.

When Ghost’s whine reaches her ears, she keeps walking.

* * *

Snow has fallen stalwart for days, burying everything under a layer of white. From the parapet on the walls, wherever she looks, the candor is absolute. Or would be if it weren’t for the banner that now accompanies the gray wolf of her family. The black and red banner of the Targaryen with the three-headed dragon.

It is difficult to breathe despite the lump in her throat, but Sansa succeeds and looks with cold and hard eyes at the symbol of her weakness.

A noise of steps behind her and then a familiar voice reaches her.

"Talking with you is as difficult as crossing the Narrow Sea." The smile she can hear in his words is a sufficient reason to turn. It seems to her that there are so little reasons to smile, recently. Seeing the disfigured face of her first husband, however she feels something like contentment. She nods at Sandor and begs him to leave them alone. With a grunt of dissatisfaction, he acquiesces, moving away.

Tyrion's eyes follow him. "Your escort hates me."

"He used to hate me too," she replies.

"It's a starting point, then." Tyrion smiles warmly and how long has it been since someone smiled at her like that? Or has spoken to her for the purest pleasure of her company rather than with the purpose of making demands and claims of any kind or getting her favor?

"It's a pleasure to see you alive and well," she says sincerely and she isn't surprised to find that she really is. She is really happy to see him again.

The astonishment in his eyes fades while he looks at her, as if to evaluate her honesty. Eventually he bows his head in a gesture of courtesy and appreciation. "The pleasure is reciprocal."

When she stretches out her hand, he brings it to his chest, close to his heart. Neither of them looks away and Sansa doesn’t give voice to her thoughts, though they are multiple and easy to guess. From the intense expression on his face, it seems that Tyrion shares most of them. It’s the kindness of two similar spirits.

A cry, probably of a Dothraki, pushes both to avert their gazes and look at the camps. At the same time one of the dragons fly over their heads. It’s the black one and the queen is on his neck. At a short distance follows the green dragon. The glimpse of black hair of the man riding him is enough to speed up the beat of her heart.

"What's your opinion?"

Sansa wears an imperturbable mask with consumed art. "I saw the crown worn by worse people."

"Her intentions are honorable," says Tyrion, and there is no sign of reprimand or accusation in his tone. Nonetheless, Sansa is bothered in an unreasonable and childish way. She doesn’t like having no power over her emotions and actions. Less than ever she likes that others have the power to upset her. She detests that the queen, among all, has this power and even more the idea that Tyrion can see in her cracks the real motives of her restlessness, her coldness.

"So I should concentrate on the end and not on the means?" Sansa replies and meanwhile, thinks,  _Two Dragons_. "Do you trust her?"

"She has named me her Hand," Tyrion responds with the usual wit, providing an elusive answer that is not an effective response.

A wise decision that indicates cunning, Sansa admits. "I'm glad that your skills are finally recognized."

"The art of government and the reasons of state. The ladies I will never be able to ignore," he comments with a smirk.

The snow continues to fall thickly and Sansa is suddenly tired. Sleep escapes her those nights, like smoke threads blown in the sky. Perhaps that is the reason, but in the last few days she feels less inclined to patience, to stall. "The queen has bought your loyalty, not your silence. I want the truth." _You owe me at least that. "_ Do you trust her?"

Tyrion doesn’t blink. "I have no reason to don't."

"Even when she deliberately ignores your suggestions and any opinion that is adverse to her desires? I know of the fleets in Meereen. I know what she did to the Tarly. Nobody deserves to die like that. Innocent or guilty, everyone has the right to a fair trial."

"Like that of Petyr Baelish?"

Sansa has an inner judder that she is good at hiding. Petyr and the way, before he sold her to Ramsay, his hands used to hovering over her body. Petyr and his invading kisses. Petyr and his hands, dirty in the blood of her family. Sansa hardens her jaw. "Petyr Baelish deserved to die."

"Because you decided it?"

Sansa turns to face openly the insinuation and her skirts slam against her ankles for the uprightness of the movement. "Petyr Baelish died because he deserved it and yes, because I, along with my brother and sister, and the advice of the Lords of the North and the Vale, found him guilty of the crimes he was accused of. Can your queen say the same?" She urges him. "She has burned a father and a son alive only because they refused to bend the knee."

"She offered them a choice. An offer they refused," he replies calmly. Sansa sees past that, though. Beyond the admiration for the queen, beyond the fidelity, beyond the belief that she could really make the difference. She looks at Tyrion and notes how, despite the placidity of his face, he held his fist.

"A fake choice." Sansa saw enough men in the midst of delusions of omnipotence. She doesn’t believe that Daenerys Targaryen belongs to the kind, but prudence is never too much.

"She isn't cruel. If you could offer her an opportunity, if you could learn to know her then you would understand-"

"That she is the lesser evil?" Sansa interrupts him. "I already know. What your queen offers is a solution. Not perfect, but the best we have. She gives us hope where we wouldn't have any. What worries me is what will happen after the end of the war."

Tyrion buzzes an eyebrow, amused. "After?"

"I've heard many stories about your queen's. She likes to play the role of the hero, defend the weak and is a eager supporter of freedom. But what would she become without any ideal to fight for? In what would she direct her longing for justice?"

In Tyrion’s silence, in the attention with which he is listening her, Sansa finds the courage needed to continue.

"She cannot stay alone. When she’ll take the throne someone will have to stand by her side. Are there any candidates you have already considered?"

With a sigh, Tyrion taps his chin. "We don’t have talk about that yet."

He looks down, as if admitting the blame he was accused of. He is not lying. Nobody has yet spoken of it, but knowing Tyrion is unlikely he hasn’t already made plans for the future. "Oh." Of course. It is so obvious.

"Sansa."

"It’s the best option. It would consolidate the alliance, silence the claims, strengthen the ties between our families."

Sansa looks back at the banners. _I'll be left alone._

"It's strange," she says, and she doesn’t have to struggle for a smile. There is an irony in all this and is sharp. If there is someone with whom she can share it, the most suitable person is Tyrion.

He notices her bitter smile, but he overlooks. She is grateful to him for it. "What's strange?" He asks, indulging her.

"I always imagined that I would have died away from Winterfell, as a hostage or as a trophy wife." There is no grudge when she pronounces the word wife and Tyrion seems to understand. "This is worse. I never imagined to be a prisoner in my home." A pause, the smile now is vanished and with her eyes fixed on the lone wolf of the hanging crest, she clarifies, "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell."

* * *

She sees them leave. A long line of men in armor and formal combact. In front there are the infantry, the Free Folk and the draperies of Unsullied, for which have been prepared specially fur-lined suits. Then follow the cavalry and the Dothraki army, striking for the screams of incitement that the warriors of Essos exchange and they say are propitious. The profile of the dragons fills the horizon, threatening and reassuring for the firepower they represent. In the colors of dawn the plumes of the banners are thrown by the wind. The shine of the spears and helmets wounds the eyes, but it's dimmed by the overwhelming atmosphere that accompanies the soldiers wearing them.

Half of these men will not come back from the Wall. Will not see their family again. Half of these men is already dead.

The despair of the women around her, the sadness and confusion incised in the children's games, the desolation of the men left behind, because either old or ill. With the army already marching on the hills, an unnerving silence replaced the screams and the tears.

 _Look_ , she would like to tell the women around her. _Take a good look at these men. What you are looking at, one day will be history. We will tell it to our children and the children of our children. Let this serve as lesson. Stories shouldn't be underestimated because in them always lies a bottom of truth._

Gilly is so close to her that Sansa can feel the heat emanated from her body as much as the anguish she is experiencing. "Wherever you go, I'll come with you," she whispers quietly. She follows the trajectory of her gaze. Sam is mounting on a wagon, helped by Gendry and Podrick. She grabs her hand and squeezes it with all her strenght. Gilly doesn’t make a sound and responds with just as much vigor. In the echo of that physical pain, the beast that consumes her from the inside seems to be satiated at least a little, to calm down.

It is with death in her heart that she observes Jon’s men, the chosen group of the King.

_Brienne of Tarth._

_Podrick Payne._

_Jaime Lannister._

To each of them she is grateful for something. She is in debt with each of them.

From tomorrow, they will march ahead, preceded only by the explorers that have been sent out in advance. Jon is one of them. He didn’t abandon the black, but refused to dress the colors of the Targaryen. At his side Ghost would be a blurred spot in the candor of the snowy landscape if it weren't for the figure on his back. Arya, dressed as a man and recognizable for the gray cloack she woven for her, raises her arm in greeting and in response, from the top of the fortified walls, Sansa does the same, lifting her hand. In the wake of that goodbye, another head turns to the gates, toward her. Even though she cannot see him, she feels like she might cry. Observing them from above, the distance dividing them seems to be exaggerated, as if to separate them there is a sea of darkness and she and Jon and Arya are on the opposite shores of two islands.

Both of them get back on track and Jon gallops in the direction of the dragons that are now tiny dots in the pale sky.

The wind howls like a wolf, whip the hem of her skirt and cloak. Long hairy threads spin on her forehead and pale cheeks, like tears of blood.

Sansa closes her eyes and hear Bran's voice whisper in her mind, instilling into her thoughts that are not her own. _So it has to be. Let go. So it has to be._ Bran is in godswood. Nothing and no one, not even her, is able to move him from his place at the foot of the heart tree. _Are you looking through Ghost’s eyes? Are you also saying goodbye to our family or have you seen something in the near future, something from which you can get a whiff of hope, something you don't want to share yet?_

"The queen fears you."

Sansa doesn’t turn around to address Tyrion properly. She doesn’t know for how long he has been there. No one stayed, not even Gilly who came back in the keep to look after her son.

"Did you hear me? Sansa-"

"I heard you," she replies, and finally turns her back to the King's Road. She doesn’t know what kind of expression she has, the remains of what emotion hasn’t left her face. Whatever it is, it's powerful enough to soften Tyrion's scowl. His compassion is not new to her, but it's the first time, perhaps, that brings a sense of comfort to her. "I've heard you," she repeats slowly. "I thought it was the reason she left you here. To keep an eye on me."

"Also," he admits with false lightness. "One of the many reasons." And he opens his arms as if to expose himself to her limpid, inquisitive stare, as to indicate his low stature, the deformity of his body. He smiles and there is something deeply wrong in the fold of that smile, impregnated with bitterness and pity and contempt. "Not really suitable for the battle, do you agree?"

Sansa would like to remind him of the Battle of Blackwater, but one of the many lessons she has learned is that even kindness can become a weapon, pity can hurt as much as an act of cruelty or mockery.

They are sincere words, those that she pronounces, looking straight into his eyes. Not kindness. Not pity. Not affection. Simple truth. "Everyone is born with a purpose. There are men born to make war and then there are men like you, born to lead us safely in times of difficulty."

Tyrion nods and the contrariety has turned into something completely different. After a little, he clears his throat. "And you?" He asks with a husky voice. "What is your purpose?"

Sansa’s stare wanders over the snowy landscape of the keep, the stone walls, the oak and iron doors, the high towers. The home of her ancestors, of her family. She remembers any past experience that served to bring her to that very moment, in that place. "Survive," she says. Her cracked lips curl in the ghost of a smile. "And allow those I love to do the same."


	7. Chapter 7

There is one last scene. A last uncomfortable truth.

Bran's eyes are wide open and staring into the void. That on his seemingly blind pupils is reflected the light of day or the moonlight, he observes the present surrounding him and crosses without effort the space of the Seven Kingdoms with the wings of the Three-eyed raven.

A moment he is at King's Landing and sees ships with black sails moored in the harbor of the city. Above it stands the shape of the red keep as a bloody hand. Dark wings, dark words, they say. Nobody has ever talked of black sails.

A moment later he is on the march with Jon. His eyes are those of Ghost. He howls and almost immediately Arya's small and callous hand caresses his snout. They are camped in a forest and in the dark the field fires are so numerous to look like fallen stars. His sister's sweaty forehead clings into the crook behind his neck. "We're alive," Arya whispers. She knows that the howl is his greeting. She has learned to recognize the humanity in Ghost’s eyes and give it a name. "Tell her this, Bran. Only this." He smells the scent of blood and sweat, of death, saturating the night air, impregnating the snow. Far away, the echo of blood-curdling screams. "Arya!" Someone shouts in the vicinity and Ghost recognizes before him the source of that voice. The man who embraces the hammer, who looks at his sister as a treasure. Arya sighs against his fur, moving away. Wolf's eyes meet woman’s eyes for the last time. Arya hardens her jaw. "Just tell her we're okay, Bran. Nothing else." And then she runs away into the night, toward the fiery battle and toward Gendry Waters's voice, holding Needle.

The present escapes in luminous ligaments at the edge of his conscience. The past is what he finds on the next trip. A recent past, but still past and therefore already carved in the stones of time.

Sansa holds a parchment in her hands. The handwriting is Jon's slightly oblique and is impossible to falsify it in their eyes. Arya has stolen it from Jon's chambers. Everything was done in the silence of night, when the living are silent or indulged in passion, and ghosts and assassins are on the loose. Reading the contents, Arya's pain wasn't silent and the tears of anger that Sansa saw glistening in her sister's eyes made her tighten her mouth in a thin line. She hated Jon for it, perhaps for the first time.

You have to be smarter than Father. You need to be smarter than Robb, she had advised Jon in a command tone dictated by concern and experience. Bran was there when it happened, he heard her.

Sansa clenches her hand around the parchment. Bran recognizes the expression on her face. It’s the same hard and solemn expression she had when Jon returned to Winterfell, riding alongside with the dragon queen. It’s the same she had when she saw him leave the courtroom after he revealed Father’s secret. It is the same she had when she turned her back in the godswood. It’s the same she had on the walls when she saw Jon and Arya leave for war. It is despair and rancor and love and something else that divides and unites.

Now that Arya has left her alone, Sansa looks at the letter with eyes narrowed in two cracks. Her skin shines like ivory and her hair are red gold. The ongoing war hasn't diminished her beauty, but has release it from the curse that can often become. Now when one looks at the Lady of Winterfell, the first thing the eye catches are not the features of exquisite elegance, but the imposing and disruptive force that the blue eyes transpire, the severity of the commander and the compassionate kindness of the mother, the warrior's courage in dealing with the unknown, the violated innocent of the maiden, the mercy and its absence when it is necessary to be resolute.

"Bran," she says, and her voice, in the silence of the room, sounds like a cry of help. She bows her head and rest her forehead against the praying hands resting on the table, still tight around the letter. "What should I do?"

 _What is right_ , he answers even if she cannot hear him. He approaches her and puts his hand on her shoulder, surprised by how minute it is. _Do what's right and everything will be fine._

The shadows created by the candles run on the walls. The time, for him already non-existent, slows to a halt in anticipation of what is going to happen, which has already happened.

In the end Sansa exhales a trembling breath and straightens her shoulders. The letter lies on the table next to the ribbon with which she usually binds her hair for the night and a bouquet of flowers collected by Gilly. Bran takes a look at its content. The first words are enough to understand the meaning of what he is reading. _…my premature departure... as my successor Daenerys Targaryen ...my cousins_ _will remain as Lord Protectors of the North..._

_Oh, Jon, what did you do?_

Sansa is wearing Mother's cloak and is getting ready to go out. Bran follows her.

They find Ghost on one of the balloons. Sansa embraces the direwolf as he has seen other women embrace their husbands, loved ones. "Bring him to me," she whispers. "You know where."

Ghost rubs his muzzle against her cheek as if to wipe the tears that she didn't cry out. When Sansa releases her embrace, the direwolf heads to the guest quarters.

Bran looks at how his sister's shoulders, having noticed this particular, got stiff. Bran looks and observes. It’s his destiny.

Even a little later, when Sansa faces Jon on the contents of the letter and he doesn't deny his actions, Bran is prevented from intervening. This time, however, the prohibition is more difficult to accept.

Recriminations bounce from one to the other, glowing words like the looks they are exchanging. The tension is such that the air is swollen as with humidity.

 _I had no choice_ , he says, and of course, from his point of view, it is so and there is some undeniable reasoning in his attempts to protect them.

 _My brother is dead_ , she says with red cheeks for the rage of something that goes beyond disappointment and betrayal. She says the truth too. Jon Snow is dead. The first time he was killed with treachery by his brothers. A second time when he laid a winter rose at the foot of Lyanna Stark's statue, calling her mother and accepting the weight of his origins.

 _You're nothing to me,_ she concludes. Bran wonders how they both believe in the lies they say. How can they pretend to not see the truth that lies at their feet like shadows, exposed to the eyes of the world.

Because when he says he did what has to be done and that he had no choice, what he really is saying is that he did it to keep the promise of protecting her.

And when she says he is nothing more to her, she is saying the exact opposite. He is everything, represents everything that counts for her.

But the words written on the letter burn like fire marks imprinted in the skin, the ink is still fresh, like the betrayal and wound that caused. None of them can ignore what was said, whether true or false.

* * *

"You cannot go on like this."

This is not the first time that Tyrion gives her this warning and Sansa would like to tell him with great detail where to go with his precious suggestions. It is pure willpower to keep her standing, nothing else. And it is her mother's memory and the respect for her and her teachings to curb her tongue from giving voice to her purposes prone to violence.

_Gods, I became like Arya._

The thought makes her burst into an uncontrolled giggle. It is out of place given the context. Judging by Tyrion's restless expression, this is just another proof of her incipient lack of discernment.

 _You should rest. You should stop share your meals with the children. You should stop having to deal with the wounded personally._ Tyrion is a continuous grumble. She knows that the main reason that drives him to warn her is concern for her physical condition. If before the army marched to the Wall, sleep had escaped her, now it is openly hostile to her. The only moments when it occurs to her is when she is exhausted. It already happened that the Lady of Winterfell was found sleeping in the corners of the keep and carried in her chambers like a little girl by Sandor Clegane, followed by Gilly and Tyrion.

Sansa knows that her appearance leaves much to be desired. Dark and deep circles don't abandon the contour of her eyes, her hair has lost their brilliance and are as thin as straw wires. The clothes has begun to grow large and her cheeks are hollowed out and no longer rosy.

But she also knows that her people need her and this is the only consolation she can find in a situation that doesn't have any. With half of her family engaged in fighting at the Wall and the other half who communicates with her through animals, with the life of every loved one hanging from a thread, the survival of Winterfell is the purpose of her life and the driving force of her days.

Sansa extends the basket with the herbs just gathered to Gilly, which is now a faithful shadow and her ally in all. In a habit hard to kill, she tidies her skirts, wet for the snow.

Tyrion is still there with an expression of scolding and she rolls her eyes. This time he doesn't smile like the first time he discovered her doing so. He doesn't laugh for her improper manners, unworthy of the refined Lady of Winterfell.

"You have to put an end to this," he says again.

Sansa nods at Gilly and the woman, after throwing a sharp look at Tyrion, moves away.

"What do you mean exactly? By your own admission, my failings are numerous lately." She hasn’t the strength to smile at him. The only courtesy is the one contained in her words. The time of smiles and laughter is over with the songs and the flowers. Now is the time to fight.

"You have to stop opening the doors to the smallfolk. The supplies have already been rationed and until the one for which Ser Davos is negotiating arrives, we can count only on what we have. Our granaries-"

" _Our_?" Sansa raises an eyebrow, her nostrils widened as anger grabs her throat. "Shall I remind you, my lord, to whom belong the granaries you speak of, with such familiarity? The food that is offered to you for my courtesy? The bed and the chambers you were granted? Winterfell is my home. Every stone, whatever happens in its boundaries, including the well-being of the people who live here, is _my_ competence, not _yours_. Any suggestion is well accepted, but remember your status of guest or I could forget my hospitality."

She moves to walk away, but Tyrion's hand rests on her elbow and prevents her from get past him.

"You know I'm right," he insists in a low and firm voice, but kindly. "You can hate me if you wish, but you know that sooner or later you will have to close the doors. What will you do then, my lady? Will you hear from the walls the supplications brought by the wind? Will you look down, looking out and watching them die, helpless? You cannot save them all."

Sansa closes her eyes and anger turns into something completely different, but equally ugly and cutting. _No, I cannot._ She will see them die for hunger or cold or sickness or violent death and will not know peace for this, there will be no one to condone pardon. The women that are helping her clear the glass garden from the flowers to make up the edible plants, the men she sends hunt each week and often return empty-handed or with insufficient loads. Their lives depend on her.

The worst thing is the weeping of the children. They don't cry for sadness or fear. They cry because they are hungry. Their weeping is her shame. Their hunger is her defeat. Sansa crosses Tyrion's gaze rigidly. "But I can try," she says.

"Dying? You're smarter than this. You know what would happen if something occurred to you."

Yes, she knows. If something happened to her, she knows what consequences the people in the north should face. Winterfell would be lost again. It would be war. Maybe not in the immediate, not with the threat of the Others, but afterwards? At the end of winter, when new shoots will start sprouting from the ground, and the bodies of the dead will have begun to decompose? Northmen don't forget. They will never accept the sovereignty of a king of the South on their lands, nor will they renounce to their independence. It will be a bath of blood.

She releases her elbow from Tyrion's grip. "Don’t worry," she says softly as that perspective makes her shiver. "I survived worse things."

* * *

Gilly rests a steaming cup on the table sprinkled with papers. The perfume that expands together with the steam is that of hawthorn. At her questioning gaze, Gilly shrugs. "You don’t sleep well," she says in a sort of explanation.

Sansa frowns. _I don’t sleep at all_ , she would like to answer. Instead, she put a hand to her forehead. "Gods. Not you too." She thinks about Tyrion, the conversation they had that afternoon and knows she is not strong enough to support a repeat. Not if the interlocutor is Gilly, whose obstinacy rivals Arya’s or Brienne’s or Lyanna Mormont’s.

Gilly doesn't appear overwhelmed by her tone and harsh manners. Nothing, in fact, really surprises this woman with penetrating eyes and deceptively soft looks.

Sansa sighs, taking the cup and between the sips, while the drink warms her throat and hands, she gives sideways glances at Gilly.

The aftertaste is bitter as a gall, but the beneficial effect is immediate and part of the accumulated tension seems to dissolve from her shoulders. "Who taught you?"

Gilly flips her hands on the apron that is tied to the woolen dress she wears. "It was Sam," she answers, and nothing in her voice lets guess what she is really feeling. Her eyes are large in her pale face and reflect the light of the candle.

Sansa nods with tact and tries to focus on trying to recognize the herbs that she used. Lime and valerian and maybe a few drops of milk of poppy.

"You have to miss him," she says absent-minded, putting down the half-empty cup.

Gilly smiles and her smile is something that shakes her heart, sad and loving and warm. She is still standing. She must be tired and aching after a long day of hard work, but her back is as straight as a soldier. Sansa points to a chair in a clear invitation to occupy it. "You're a loyal person," she says with appreciation. "Sam is lucky to have you."

Sam is more than lucky. What he shares with Gilly goes far beyond luck. It’s precious and unique and it is painful to see how Gilly struggles for the absence of Sam and at the same time is proud of him. Despite this, Gilly is tireless and willing, has a solar character. She is among the first people to get up early before dawn, to go with the buckets of water for the kitchens and one of the last to fall asleep. In some respects she reminds her of old Nan, for her passion for stories and the glitter of her intelligent eyes and the ripple of her lips when something delights her.

"And so I am," she admits quietly. Gilly stares at her and Sansa grins a tiny smile before her eyes go back to the scrolls on the table, the maps and the dispatches. The smile dies on her lips. "Why do you do all this? Why are you so kind to me? Did he ask you to do this... Sam?" The way she has lingered before pronouncing Sam's name cannot be gone unnoticed.

The name she was thinking of is another, but in the middle of the night, when every nightmare seems to be real and every shade is emphasized, worries are fired by darkness, that name becomes like a condemnation and it’s impossible to pronounce. Another thought that keeps her awake, captivated by evil fantasies. As often happens, her thoughts inevitably undergo a sharp turn. _Fire and ashes and blood and destruction and screams in a perpetual night. Jon._

Their meeting in the godswood. It might be the last time she saw him alive. _Will it be of anger the last reminder I have of you, the last words I told you?_

Sansa doesn't know what has hurt her most: if the idea that Jon was so far-sighted to write a will, to consider and accept the idea of not returning from war or the fact that he acted without informing her and that she found out by pure chance. _Why that surprise you? Is not what he has always done? That you have always reproached him for since you found each other?_

Jon acts alone, but for the common good. Only she continues to look for the support of the people around her. Before there were Theon and Brienne, then Jon, then she did it with Bran and Arya. Will ever end her addiction to people? Will she ever really learn from the mistakes made in the past?

 _The lone wolf perishes while the pack survives_. At the memory of Father's deep voice, the fears suddenly blur.

Sansa comes up with a slight flich when Gilly's voice breaks the silence. "You are a sister of Kings. You could have been a queen. You've grown up to be a lady. I'm just a free folk’s daughter. Sam says we're all the same in the end, in the face of death. No one of the gods, yours or mine, judges the blood flowing through our veins. We will not be judged for who we are but for what we are, what we did. When Sam and I arrived, you could have driven us out. Nothing obliged you to do the opposite, but you did. You asked Sam to join Maester Wolkan and you treated me like a guest. You didn't ask me to work, you didn't ask for anything in return. We both have nothing in common and yet we are alike." Gilly shows the palm of her hand and beside hers, their hands, flushed and callous, are impossible to distinguish. "Now more than ever."

Sansa tries to breathe. Inside her there is a girl who wanted to become queen and died in a throne room along with the honor of many knights. A girl who didn't cry discovering the death of her only friend, exploding for the use of wildfire along with her family. There is a girl who would want to cry now, looking at her ruined hands and thinking that her mother's hands have never been like this. Looking at the woman in front of her, the urge to cry disappears. A woman who should be broken, but that continues to trust in the future, to experience hope. And Sansa envies her strength, her courage, her pertinence.

She extends her hand to Gilly's. "Now more than ever," she repeats. When darkness falls on her reddened eyes, she feels like is crashing into the void, but Gilly's arms support her quickly.

Sansa thinks of the milk of poppy. Maybe they were more than a few drops.

"Gilly," she tries to murmur, but her voice has abandoned her. "What did you give me to drink?

"You will sleep," she responds, and in her state of unconsciousness she listens the voices of her mother and Old Nan and Margaery Tyrell talking through Gilly. "You will not dream. When you wake up, you will come back to fight, but for now, rest and forget the world you protect."

* * *

It's the sound of horns that wakes her up from a deep sleep without dreams. Sansa doesn’t know how much she slept, but she doesn’t have time to think about it. Horns resound into the castle, ringing like thunder. They seem to shake the fortress from its foundations and with it the fragile peace she had hardly built.

She is in the bed of her parents, covered with too many furs. Sansa kicks them away and pushes aside her long hair with trembling hands. She skips the chamber looking for a gown and dresses in a hurry, with agile fingers that button down and tighten her bodice laces expertly. She doesn't have the patience to braid her hair and leave them free. They are a copper cascade that falls on her shoulders and back, redder than sunset.

The keep is in uproar. Men and women run in panic and confusion. When they notice her, women seem desperate enough to cling to her skirts. There are other women, though, who are already escorting the children to the safest place. They are taking them to the crypts, according to the emergency plan she prepared months ago in case of danger or attack. Men are arming and joining in the courtyards, following the instructions given by Lyanna Mormont. Sansa would like to reassure them, she would like to be proud of the men and women of the North, but the fear she feels is so tearful that only the sound of horns succeeds in making her go ahead. Not knowing what's going on is worse than anything else. She stops one of the women, one who doesn't look petrified and asks, "What's going on?"

If the woman is astonished that the Lady of Winterfell is still unaware of the situation, she doesn’t show it. There is no time for deference and convenience, and the woman understands it. "A retreat, my lady!" she exclaims and her eyes dart nervously toward the courtyard, where an orderly row of children is descending into the crypts. Probably her son is among them.

Sansa thanks her. "Go to your son," she says. If these are their last moments, it seems fair to spend them with the dear ones.

The woman shakes her head and the agitation gives way to pride. She is clearly in conflict between what her heart is craving and what feels right, between love and duty. "My son is in good hands. Thank you, my lady, but I can make myself useful. Let me help if I can."

Sansa doesn’t know the name of this woman, but tries to imprint her face in her memory. She lets her go to the armory and reaches the Great Hall with her heart in her mouth. After climbing the low stone steps, she opens the wide doors. From the high and narrow windows the light entering is barely sufficient. The men are few and all grouped in front of the fireplace. Hearing the door noise, only one of them turns in her direction. With a nod and few words, he moves away from them to reach her.

"Tyrion."

His expression is brooding and his eyes seem agitated. "My lady."

"Update me."

He gives her a rolled parchment. The seal is that of the three-headed dragon. "The letter has just arrived."

Sansa doesn't take it. "What news?" She asks.

"Not good," he answers. "The enemy has defeated our forces. The queen is severely injured. Another dragon was lost and the King in the North faced the Night King on the battlefront."

Sansa bites the inside of the cheek. She feels the blood drain from her face.

Tyrion looks at her like she is an injured animal. It’s a look she has learned to recognize and hate. "He survives, but by miracle. Thanks to his wolf and the treatment of Samwell Tarly."

 _Thanks the Gods._ "What of my sister? And Brienne of Tarth?"

"They are not mentioned."

This is inacceptable. She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes. When she reopens, she knows what to do. "I have to see Bran."

* * *

Sansa is a vision of fire and snow. Bran wonders if his sister is aware of wearing the colors of the house she seems to detest. Black and red. And that ferocity in the gaze, that passion, that suffering.

"Tell me what you've seen," she says and her eyes are blue as the sky behind the northern mountains, the waters of Long Lake. Bran has been there recently. He observed his grandfather's grandfather fighting alongside Lord Harmond Umber and repelling the invasion of Raymun Redbeard. He remained until the end of the battle and saw the brothers of the Night’s Watch bury the dead. There is an entire army of Others hidden into the shore of the lake.

"I know you've seen something," Sansa insists. "Something you don't want to tell me. I never asked you anything, Bran. I'm doing it now. Please."

Bran looks at his sister and thinks of Mother's horrible howl after Roose Bolton stabbed Robb through the heart. He thinks of the smell of death on Arya's skin, the dry blood on Needle’s blade when she went off to follow Gendry's voice.

He remembers once to have asked his father if a man could be brave even though he was afraid. His father's response had been that that was the only time he could have been.

Sansa is scared and that feeling is transparent for those who know her well enough to look beyond the wall of her self-control. She is scared, yet she has enough courage to win her fear and fight.

"There is a way to win the war," Bran says slowly, "but the price to pay is too high."

Sansa doesn’t blink, she barely breathes. Her face is hard and determined like that of Lyanna. Everyone thinks Arya is the most like their aunt. Everyone is wrong, stopping at appearances.

"A life." A break. The silence around them is fragmented by the sound of horns in the distance. "Yours, Sansa."


	8. Chapter 8

_A life. Yours, Sansa._

The ground doesn’t start to shake beneath her feet and the snow doesn’t stop swirling furiously. Everything continues to exist, for better or for worse, without any distinguishable changes.

Why should it be different after all?

She knows she should feel something. Something different from the strange torpor that took possession of her body. She feels numb, as if she had spent too much time outside in inadequate clothes. The sensation is similar to that experienced after swimming through the frozen river to escape from Ramsay, the slimy disgust caused by layers of skirts and petticoats to freeze against the skin. With only one difference. This time it is not escorted by terror. There is no trace of anxiety or disturbance. Only detachment and estrangement and a clarity of mind, ideas, thoughts.

Live or die. When did it stop being important? When the difference between the two options has become too thin to fear any repercussions and consequences? When _how_ to die and its usefulness in a larger design prevailed over the very concept of death, its irremediability? If it were about her family, she wouldn’t be capable of such ruthlessness. Their death would be an unbearable burden, but hers? If it’s in exchange, if it is enough to save _them_...

What should she be afraid of? For her, what is fear if not the memory of things already happened, whose scars are testimony and damnation? There is nothing left to fear for her. It is not for her own safety that she fights every day, it is not for her survival that she spits blood and swallows hatred and traces her own path to the detriment of the obstacles that stand before her. Sansa has ceased to fear for herself since the dawn of time, when she buried herself under the thicker layers of the armor that she sewed for herself, behind the identities with which she survived.

"Sansa." Bran's voice contains the peace of the awakening after a nightmare.

She blinks. Slowly the throbbing of her heartbeats stops deafening her and the quiet roar of the world fills her ears once more.

The truth weighs her behind the familiar features of her brother and as usual it’s troubled and not easy, but what is it really?

"Sansa," she hears him repeat. If it were anyone else, she would attribute a tormented quality to the viscosity of his gaze. The gaze of someone for whom time has no boundaries and the extension of the sky has no unlimited dimensions.

"What you just told me," she says with the peremptory calm with which she usually gives orders to their attendants, "you cannot repeat it to no one. _No one_ , Bran. Promise me." Faced with his static silence, she insists urgently, "Promise me." 

* * *

_Promise me, Ned._

If only she knew, if only she saw, Sansa would understand the reason for his delay. Traces of another Stark woman, beautiful and proud and animated by the same absolute love, are now revealed in his sister. The superimposition of two different but related stories. Two destinies bonded by feelings that lastly make any kind of sacrifice acceptable.

 _Promise me, Ned._  

History, he has learned at his expense, outlines the course of events in a tragically, fatally resembling spiral. The faces of those who live it can change, but it is always the cyclical repetition of chaos and creation. 

Two decades ago, a brother made an impossible promise and the story took a different turn from what anyone would have imagined. That impossible choice will save them all. Now, two decades later, like his father before him, Bran Stark is faced with another impossible choice. 

The weight of what he saw presses against his ribs, like an unsuspected stab. _Columns of ashes and smoke to fill an otherwise terse night. A man who cradles a woman, pale and thin as a dagger of bones and red like the crowns of the trees set on fire by the last dragon. Her bloody lips are inflected in a serene and sad smile, and with a trembling hand she tries to pull back strands of dark hair from the man's face, bent over her. As she speaks, the man cries, repeating her name, begging her to not go. But it's too late, it's always been too late._

He closes his eyes on the windows of the past and opens them on those of the present. "I promise." 

He sees her sigh and the relief on her face is so palpable that he could touch it. When she leans forward to touch his cheek with her lips in a kiss of gratitude and affection, what little that remained of his heart breaks definitively. Bran Stark falls asleep and the three-eyed Raven takes flight. 

* * *

All men are destined to die. It is what makes them men. Death is the closing note that ends the journey.

Hers was complicated. Others would call it miserable. But it’s hers, it belongs only to her, errors and horrors included.

They deprived her of the name of her family, of her birthright. They tried to bend her and break her will. To ugly her soul. She has been humiliated, wounded, betrayed. They took everything from her except life. To survive she was forced to perform unspeakable, unforgivable actions. Disclaiming her family is one of them. But she doesn’t regret it.

 _L_ _ook what you did._ Winterfell resists. Her house, her people.

Everyone dies sooner or later. No matter what she is willing to do to protect them, one day, whether she wants it or not, it will happen to Arya. The end will also come for Bran. And for _him_. Even if she must die, as is natural, she wants it to be on her terms. A useful one rather than a futile death is all that she hopes for. But before it happens... before what Bran has seen is fulfilled, she would like...  

"Sansa!" She hears someone call and in the crowd that fills the courtyard - men and women wrapped in hugs so tight and desperate that just looking at them it seems to intrude into something intimate and private; the miracle of assembled families; the cries of mourning for those who didn’t return - she immobilizes and turns around, looking impatiently for the person to whom that voice belongs.  

"Arya!" She calls in turn and from a distance other voices are added to that of her sister, voices that Sansa had feared she would never listen again. She moves in the direction she hopes to be correct, barely making her way through the confusion of the various reunions, of the wounded who are transported to the Great Hall according to the protocol that she and the servants established months ago, of the soldiers who beg for a drop of water or a piece of bread. In the haste and in the frantic bewilderment, with the smell of blood and the stink of filth and the stench that men carry on themselves like a second shadow, for once she is deaf and blind to her duties.

"Arya!"

Finally she sees her. Next to Gendry, he too with a malnourished and weary appearance and with visible cuts on most of his body. She barely keeps standing on her legs, she is thinner and has a blackbird's nest in place of her head, but is alive and at the moment is all that matters.

Sansa is instantly relieved of a weight she didn’t even know she had, a physical and moral suffering. She takes the last steps running and wraps her arms around her sister's body. She finds it fleshless and sharp against hers. She should worry, but there will be time for that too. Now all she feels is a dazzling euphoria, which leaves no room for other feelings while strangely Arya lets herself be hugged without a sound of protest.

"You're safe!"

She listens Arya's amused laughter and it's such a sweet, familiar sound that she has to bite her lips to avoid laughing. _Here._ _Before the end I want this._ The comfort of a hug, the lump of ferocious tenderness that make it difficult to speak, which breaks down the remnants of any possible distance may have existed between them previously. When she finally lets her go, she turns to do the same with –

"Brienne! Podrick!"

Brienne is battered and Podrick has a patch on his right eye. Both seem disoriented by the enthusiasm with which she embraces them, but the fatigue on their gray faces fades into a sketchy smile.

"Do you want to hug me too, flower girl?"

The laughter stuck in her throat - a lightness that would push her feet to dance like when she didn’t know yet the weight of secrets and lies - wells and in any other day the idea that it was Jaime Lannister to rip it off would be inconceivable. A Jaime Lannister almost unrecognizable: gaunt and dirty, with a shaggy beard and long disheveled hair. The appropriate response to an attitude of such impertinence would be a comment so polite to silence him. But today is not an ordinary day. Today is the day of hope, of return. The war is far from its end and the prospects of victory are a distant mirage. Despite this, it’s not yet all lost. It doesn’t seem lost at least, not now, when all the people dear to her are close.

She laughs again and cut in on the middle of that laugh, his voice reaches her.

"Sansa." 

* * *

They call them survivors. They call them cursed. Maybe both are true.

One thing is certain. They are the Long Night Warriors.

Only a tenth of the thousands of men who left for the Wall returned. Comrades in arms died before his impotent eyes. Men he knew, that he learned to appreciate for their valor and courage. Those who once were his brothers. Dothraki, Immaculate, men of the North and South were overwhelmed by the enemy army, mowed away like grass stems.

Every night he sees them in his dreams. Their chalk-white faces disintegrate. The flesh flakes to shreds like a snake that mutes and shows the bones below. The worst thing is not the icy blue eyes, nor the dried muscles nor the way their livid mouth seems to move to pronounce silent words, accompany their death sentences. No, the worst thing is that these things against nature, these corpses that walk once were men. They lived and fought, they had a family and who knows, maybe they loved. Now their only instinct is to kill, the only emotions they feel are violence and hate.

The screams of call and the fumes of the fires raised in the night. In the column of ashes that filled the sky and created a stair to the stars, he breathed the remains of the fallen. The smell of the burnt flesh that plagued the air, the branches and the pieces of cloth used to set the pyres. Every man had learned to always carry a flint along. Every comrade, once dead, was a potential enemy that was added to the already substantial files of the Others.

In the realm of ice and fire that had become the battlefield, they gave them other names. _White shadows_ , because it was what they were. White shadows sparkling in the darkness like moonbeams and flashes of silver.  

He learned to fear the darkness of the night and to hate the long silences, the periods of no activity that were interspersed with the clashes and the assault charges. He learned to love late dawns, the glimmer of light and the triumph of soft colors that created an illusion of hope, giving a glimpse of beauty in a land of desolation. With the dawn the shadows withdrew, allowing brief moments of truce. With the protracted months and the penetration of the real winter, the nights began to lengthen and the hours of light decreased exponentially. And the dawns, already so precious, became the only moment in which it was possible to feel again men and not instruments of death and destruction.

With his heart pounding in his chest, Jon watches as Sansa pushes through the crowd that has gathered to welcome the army in retreat. The song of blood, of ice and fire is silent, enveloped by the urgency that has taken possession of his body. The need to approach and touch what the eyes see, but don’t believe real. 

Sansa wears a dark dress and doesn’t have a cloak. She looks distracted, not composed as usual. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair, strangely loose and without even a braid to restrain them on her temples, fan out on her back.

He watches her as she laughs, beaming and carefree as he thought he would never see her again and his breath catches in his throat. What he feels by looking at her is more intense than what he felt when he saw the profile of Winterfell. It resembles the severe melancholy he has experienced in the last few months during the dawns. He feels subjugated.

Screams force him to move his eyes upward, where Raeghal's imposing shape is rapidly approaching. Even from a distance, Daenerys has a suffering expression and her pallor stands out alarmingly in the black clothes she wears.

He knows what his role is, his duty. He knows what he should do. Order the men to rescue the most serious injured, plan the attack of that night and arrange the guards on the walls for the daylight hours, tactically reorganize the remaining forces. But Sansa’s laughter is too strong a temptation and her face, after months spent with monsters as only companions... there is no duty that holds him, there can be no opposition, however sensible, to the need that is tearing his chest apart. 

Jon approaches the group with Ghost by his side. When he’s behind her, he pronounces her name and sees her stiffen. Her smile is fixed on her lips like a frozen flower and the light in her eyes hardens before modeling in something vulnerable and fragile.

Suddenly uncertain, he remembers their last meeting, the expression of bitterness she had back then, caused by the disappointment for what she considered another betrayal. There was no sweetness between them last time, only anger and discontent and mutual frustration.

He knows what he should do and knows what he shouldn’t do. Now that he has seen her, that he is sure she is well, he should move away and fulfill his duties. But how? How could he when she looks at him with that trepidation, with eyes so bright and - 

"Jon," she says and he remembers a similar moment, remembers it as if it had happened the day before. He immediately recognizes the request in her gaze, her urgency which is also his. He indulge it. Together, at the same time, she extends her arms while he widens his own to welcome her against him, lifting her off the ground. He feels her body arch against his and his grip becomes spasmodic when Sansa begins to shake with mute sobs that, if only he was still capable of, he would equal. Because for the first time since he left, the world has regained meaning. No sacrifice, no horror seems too great to bear if it is to protect her, to keep the promise he made to her. A tight arm around her waist, Jon puts his hand behind her neck, in the soft hair he dreamed of during the dawns. The scent of Sansa is the scent of home: cold and ferrous, free of counterfeits.

Too soon the names of both are pronounced promptly. Too early he is forced to loosen his embrace, she to pull back the face that she pressed between his neck and his shoulder. 

His reluctance to let her go is as clear as that of Sansa in separating herself from him. The tremulous smile, the moist and throbbing eyelashes and the eyes vibrant of the same feeling that he no longer intends to deny.

There is a limit to the wars that a man can fight and he has achieved his. He can fight against monsters, but not against himself, not against her.

Sansa places both hands on his chest. "I'm still furious," she says in a witty tone and if he didn’t know her well as he learned to do, the hilarious playfulness in her clear eyes would pass unnoticed to him, just as the crease of her mouth slightly arched upwards.

With a chuckle, he gently brushes a lock of hair from her forehead. "I wouldn’t expect anything less."

If they were alone, he would kiss her, but the umpteenth call for both and the noise of someone clearing the throat, presumably Arya, convince him that it’s not a good idea.

Before he can say anything, Sansa touches his chin with her thumb. "I know." 

She is the first to step away and he is grateful for it, even if he instantly regrets the absence of physical contact, her heat so inviting after he has known the true cold, the one from which there is no return. "Ghost will remain with you," he says and while the direwolf joins her side, encouraged by his words, after a moment's hesitation, he adds, "He has missed you." 

She smiles, perfectly guessing that he isn’t referring to Ghost. "I hope so."

* * *

The profile of Jon, less debilitated and wounded than the bloody vision that has taken shape on her eyelids every time she closed them in the last few months, is moving away. His shoulders are slightly curved and his foot is less energetic, his face is hollowed and his beard, when he kissed her forehead, scratched her skin. But, just like Arya, he is alive, he breathes and looks at her as if – 

"What was _that_?" Jaime asks as soon as Jon is out of earshot. Faced with the pregnant silence of those present, despite Brienne’s poke in the ribs, Jaime rolls his eyes. "Come on, you cannot make me believe that I’m the only one who finds something deeply wrong in this touching reunion between brother and sister? Only me? Really? _The irony_." 

Sansa decides to not deign him of an answer, focused as she is in holding Arya's impenetrable gaze. Her mind is a whirlwind of contradictions, but for once not of regrets. "Arya-" she begins, not knowing how to proceed, only to be interrupted instantly by her sister. 

"There is no need for you to say anything," she says, with the same intense gaze that could cause discomfort and subjection in anyone who sustains it. " _The world we knew no longer exists and the one that will come, we will decide how to rebuild it_ ," she says in the tone of someone who is repeating the verse of a ballad or the quotation of her favorite book.

"Bran?" Sansa asks quietly, crossing her hands in front of her. And meanwhile, she thinks, losing a beat: _what has he already told you? Were you the reason for his hesitation in promising?_ You cannot tell anyone, she made him swear by the heart tree, while the distant sound of the horns echoed in the silent tumult of her resolution.  

Arya’s penetrating expression doesn’t change. "Bran," she agrees with a nod that holds the confirmation of all her fears.  

 _No one_ , she had said. (Did it really happen less than an hour ago? How strangely the time works. Dark and elusive, it seems like months have passed.) No one and Arya can be anyone as no one. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A transition chapter, short but full of events (or at least that's what I hope). I don’t want to anticipate anything, but I can at least tell you this. From this moment on, the roles will be reversed. I hope that Sansa's reaction has not left you unsatisfied. From my point of view it is quite normal. She is in a state of shock and therefore far from the logical version of herself that we are used to. Of course the shock will ease off from the next chapter and she will resume being the lady we know and love. Once in a while it's nice to write her in this way, without the restraints of her conscience, the constant troubles that persecutes her.  
> I take this opportunity to apologize if I have made you wait so long. It has been a difficult year from every point of view. At work, emotionally. I'm starting to breathe again like after a long apnea.  
> Thank you for your support and appreciation. I really hope you enjoyed it!


	9. Chapter 9

"Don’t you think she's different?"

They are sitting side by side at one of the trestle tables in the great hall. They are eating. The raised platform where the family and the noble guests used to sit has been put aside to reuse the space in a more practical way. One of the rare positive aspects of war. The distinctions of rank and what was once considered socially obligatory have almost disappeared, annihilated by the struggle for common survival, the death that makes everyone equal.

The bread is stale and the soup is watery, but they are appeasing the hunger pangs and give at least a semblance of satiety to his stomach. Even if he wanted to, Jon doesn’t believe he could really taste what he’s swallowing. But it seems to be enough for his body. The absorbed silence around them makes him understand that it’s the same for the others men.

He continues to chew the bite with difficulty and follows the direction in which Arya's eyes are focused. His gaze is blurred, too many waking hours, but after blinking a couple of times the vague fog seems to disperse and he manages to focus on the end of the room. At the back, surrounded by nearly twenty women carrying trays and huge steaming pans, Sansa is helping to serve the men. Once a scene like this would have impressed him, now the habit makes it almost go unnoticed.

He wonders what Lady Catelyn Stark would think. Would she cringe or be proud of her daughter, of the woman she has become?

Her memory, when Sansa resemblance to her is indisputable, fills him with regret. Lady Stark was an icy woman with whom she hated and generous with whom she loved. In this, as in a thousand other bites, Sansa departs from her. Even when she showed signs of hating him, Sansa remained close to him, faithful and loyal until the end.

He brings another spoonful to the mouth mechanically.

If only could, Arya's eyes would pierce him and he understands that refraining from tackling this conversation is a groundless hope. With a grimace, preparing himself for a potential battle, he breaks the bread.

"Who is not?" He answers and would like not to feel so tired and old.

Arya gives him a strange look.

"What?" He asks defensively.

"Nothing." She shrugs. "Just... it's something she would have said."

Again, like the moth attracted by the fire, Arya returns to stare at her sister. Jon cannot help himself from doing the same. Search her everywhere, find her easily because he has learned to recognize the signs of her passage in the clean bandages around the men’s limbs, in the ring of women accompanying her everywhere, in the basin of water always awaiting for him in his rooms, in the change of clean clothes on his bed redone. And it's not enough. Once it would have been perhaps. _No, it was,_ he corrects himself. There was a time when he didn’t know the sensation of her fingers on the skin, the caress of her breath against his face. He wasn’t hers yet. And so looking at her from a distance was enough. Now instead... _Now_.

As dragged by the added poignancy of their glances, Sansa turns around. Their eyes meet and a different hunger invades the pit of his stomach. It lasts only for a moment. In the next one Sansa has already given them the back, resuming what she was doing without giving any sign of having even detected their presence.

Tactless and unable to behave discreetly, Arya tightens a hand around the handle of the dagger as if to vent her irritation. "You cannot haven’t noticed it," she accuses him and the spite in her voice is saturated with another feeling that can hardly be disguised. Concern.

He would like to not know what she's talking about.

* * *

_Don’t you think she's different?_

_You cannot haven’t noticed it._

He doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s a thought that has haunted him for several weeks, which gnaws his conscience like a poisoned tooth.

The difference, especially when compared to the early days of quiet after the army’s return from the Wall, is undeniable.

Sansa has changed overnight, for no apparent reason. It isn’t a tangible change, it’s mostly about impressions. After all, part of her is a mystery, it always has been. In her desires, in her thoughts, in the intimacy of the intentions that are the pivot around which rotates everything she does.

Lately, however, that mystery has turned into something dark and complicated and something even more secret, a deep and unconfessed motivation seems to hide behind each of her actions. There is a fury that overcomes all previous self-denial. Sometimes she seems unable to stop, animated by a kind of fervor, a kind of apprehension that makes it impossible for her, as if she hired a fight against the limits of her body that she doesn’t intend to lose.

Her mood become fickle and her face is often devoid of the filters to which she resorted as a bulwark of her privacy. The mask of imperturbability and prudence has been set aside, forgotten as if her mind is engaged elsewhere, fighting against an invisible enemy that sucks all her energy and concentration.

She has become impatient in the presence of strangers, she withdraws in front of the empty political skirmishes and even if she appears always polite and accomplished, he reads in her eyes the restlessness of returning to take care of the soldiers, where her presence it’s equally necessary, but that gives immediate satisfactions, which makes her feel useful. She who has always supported the convenience and the advantages in maintaining friendly relations with their allies, expert in turning to their favor even the most adverse circumstances. It’s as if now she considers that commitment a useless waste of energy.

Where before there was always Sansa to smooth with the appropriate words the fiercest quirks, now it's up to Jon to intervene as a peacemaker. He had to learn the art of compromise. And now he realizes how tiring and exasperating it is. To meet the needs of all of them, to listen and keep the distance. How good she was and how much he still has to learn. He is trying and for someone this is enough. It wouldn’t have been for her. She would spur him on and point out his mistakes. She would have been the most implacable and strict of the judges. ( _Tyrion raising a cup of wine in a silent toast after he silenced yet another squabble between Gray Worm and one of the Dothraki. Ser Davos putting his hand on his shoulder and looking at him with a father’s pride, the way Ned looked at him and Robb. Daenerys listening carefully to his suggestions in the war council and looking at him from the other end of the long table with approval. Tormund giving him a pat on the back and whistling: "Well done!"_.)

She became sensitive to touch. If first she refused his touch, now she seeks it as if it were a warning and a reassurance. At the same time she continues to avoid it, as if the intensity of what provokes between them overwhelms her. (He had believed nothing existed able to intimidate Sansa. But how else call the harsh emotion that made her lips contract, the pained expression as if she might cry?)

Sometimes they can spend entire days without see each other, both committed as they are: she supporting Sam in the care of the wounded, in the supervision of the distribution of food supplies, dealing with the coexistence of people that only the war made allies; he speaking with the commanders in an attempt to plan the attacks, smoothing out the differences, trying to unify at best the sides of four armed forces.

Other times, however, they seem unable to get too far from each other. They retraces the steps of the other and when their eyes meet, over the row of people piled in one of the courtyards waiting for their daily ration or in the great hall during a strategic meeting in which nothing is concluded, then everything seems to slow down to pause and be still.

There are two times during the day when they try to find each other.

The dawn, with the closing of the doors and the return into the keep. The way she hugs him after every night spent fighting, regardless of the sweat and dirt soiling him, even if she isn’t far behind with her muddied and bloody skirts.

The sunset, with the opening of the doors. Men create an orderly and taciturn row. In the midst of them Jon waits for Ghost to reach him and it’s when he appears at his side - the only reason he departs from her is to go into battle with him – that he turns to look up. From the balcony, she looks incredibly distant and at the same time close. Every day could be the last time he sees her like that. Words or goodbyes were never needed. It's not even really necessary for her to go there. After all, the image of Sansa is carved in his memory, in his heart.

* * *

"Gilly?" The surprise in finding her in his room is muffled by the even greater surprise of finding her intent on putting undoubtedly feminine clothes in the maple settle in front of the bed. "What are you doing here?"

Gilly rolls her eyes and snorts. With a few moments of delay he understands why. Now that he observes them better, it’s easy to recognize the clothes. Didn’t he admire them again and again on Sansa? And a moment later he understands what Gilly is really doing: she's not putting them off as he had originally thought. She is pulling them out of the wrappers that protected them. To do what, though?

As if he weren’t present, Gilly holds a pair of scissors – these too familiar, borrowed from a basket that is always full - and begins to shred the fabric mercilessly, not taking care of the precious embroideries and the gaskets whose realization required a great deal of dedication.

"What are you doing?" He asks again horrified and tries to snatch the scissors from her hands and also the dress so brutally mutilated.

Gilly wriggles, but doesn’t move to regain possession of the dress. She doesn’t seem startled by his reaction. On the contrary, she has a stubborn expression. "What I was ordered to do," she replies.

"And who ordered you?"

"Who ordered me?" She demands in turn with her hands resting on her hips. Asked by anyone else the question would appear cheeky. Made by Gilly, however, it only sounds condescending, as if it were urging him to be reasonable, to recognize the obviousness of the answer.

 _Oh_ , he thinks. He blinks and forces himself to return the dress to her. "Why?"

"Bandages," she explains with practicality. "We're running out of it."

In a gesture of reluctant defeat, Jon runs a hand through his hair and his fingers fit almost immediately into one of the many knots. Without further comment, he unhooks his sword from his belt and rests it across one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. He approaches the basin in the corner, full of clean water and begins to rinse his hands and face.

Gilly continues to ruin Sansa's best clothes. To distract himself from the unbearable noise of the torn fabric, his eyes begin to wander across the room, paying attention to the environment around him for the first time. His own room is foreign and familiar. Every piece of furniture and furnishings is where it should be, exactly in its place, but there is something vague and imperceptible in the air that disorients him, like a perfume, a sensation, a memory.

He understands what it is when he turns around to find that Gilly has stopped what she was doing and is watching him, her dark eyes immediately grasping the reason behind his confusion. "She offered her rooms to your queen after she was wounded. Hers were closer to Sam’s. They’re also appropriate to her rank."

 _When it happened_ , he would like to ask and the grudge is directed mainly against himself. Of how many other similar situations to this he was conveniently unaware?

Yet the signs of her presence are evident, especially once one has learned to recognize the traces. The fragrance that hovers, delicate and sweet; the faint warmth of the bed in the part where he usually falls asleep (he had thought that in both cases it was a blunder of his mind, the desire to have her near that even common sense couldn’t tame).

"Who did you think would tidy up?" Gilly asks, not without kindness, but also with abrupt and brutal frankness. "The servants have enough to do without adding to their tasks the negligence of a disordered man."

Sansa shares his rooms. She sleeps in his bed. Yet when they are together they are never alone, there is always someone with them and perhaps it is not a coincidence, but something deliberate.

_Don’t you think she's different?_

_You cannot haven’t noticed it._

The truth he refused to face for fear of the consequences.

She is avoiding him. But why?

He did the same. Before leaving for the Wall, since he saw her turn away from him in the godswood - once, twice. On both occasions with her head held high and with a heavy step, as if she were carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. The back straight as the trunk of a tree, the severe profile carved in the hardest stone.

And she, before him, had done something similar after his return from the south. He had thought it was disappointment, because he had bent the knee. A suspect takes shape, harpoons him in the chest. The revelation that escorts it stuns him. _Since back then? It's been so long since I_ _began_ _disappointing_ _you?_

Jon passes a hand over his eyes, partly to hide from Gilly the stricken expression on his face, partly because the light in the room seems suddenly too bright to bear.

* * *

He didn’t go looking for her right away. He couldn’t (and wouldn’t have succeeded even if he could). He finds her three days later, after he has asked for her twice and after twice he has missed her by a whisker. He arrived in the kitchens and Turnip (the daughter of the previous cook. Gage cooked beef and bacon, steak and kidney pies. He made lemoncakes for Sansa every time he had lemons) threatened him with a wooden spoon, pointing him towards the forge where Gendry, shirtless and helped by Arya with the bellows, was taking a piece of iron with tongs.

When he enters the greenhouse, he doesn’t know how to feel. Many months have passed since the last time he set foot there and the only thing left unchanged is the sloping roof and the green and yellow glass slabs of the windows that open outwards.

"What happened to the flowers?"

Sansa isn’t alone. Kneeling on the ground next to her, among them a basket in which they are gathering vegetables, there is Gilly and not far away there is also Ghost. Without turning around, Sansa continues to rummage among the buried long-stemmed plants, studying them in depth thought. "We are in winter," she replies. "Flowers don’t survive in winter. We also needed space to grow vegetables."

 _Flowers don’t survive in winter._ The way she said it, not with bitterness, but as a matter of fact, an incontrovertible reality, touches him deeply.

When she's finished, he's still there, near the entrance. The edge of her skirts and her hands are dirty with earth, and yet she has never seemed more regal to him. "Don’t worry," she says, passing close to him. Her gentle smile is accompanied by a distracted caress, the light weight of her hand on his elbow. "There will be time for flowers. Once the war is over."

Sansa leaves and it’s then, moving to follow her, that Jon notices the winter roses. Perched on a whole side of the wall, vigorous and of a pale blue like frost. All the flowers have been uprooted and replaced by edible vegetables and plants. Only the winter roses, whose fragrance is vaporous and intense even ten paces away, have survived that raid.

"She said they were your mother's favorite flowers," Gilly says concisely, interpreting his dismay. "She knows you get one and put it on her grave whenever you can."

* * *

_She’s in a dream. Sansa recognizes the feeling._

_The walls of the dream are closed around her in a violent embrace. Everything is black as ink. Then, from black and suffocating, the oppression disappears and gray snowflakes begin to fall from bottom to top. Sansa touches one with a fingertip and from gray that becomes golden and warm like a drop of sun._

Sansa.

_A voice is calling her and she doesn’t understand from where, it seems that it comes from every point around her, a whole one with darkness and the strange snow that when touched releases a warmth similar to a maternal caress._

Sansa _, the voice speaks again and this time she recognizes him._

Bran?

I'm here _, he answers._

_Sansa stretches her hands towards the void as if to grasp the echo of his words. She perceives Bran's presence, she can almost feel it physically as if he were in front of her, the imprint of his conscience graven on her mind. She can hear him but –_

Why I cannot see you?

 _She hears him sighing in the shadows in which he’s hiding._ You could. You will. When the time will come. When you're ready.

Ready for what? _Isn’t it enough what she has already done? Hasn’t she already given enough proof of what she is capable of?_

Listen. Open your eyes and listen. This is what you really are.

 _A barren land that creaks and makes the sound of thunder when it’s trampled. Air that burns the lungs to the point that breathing is like swallowing fire. She is running. The sky above her is vast and inaccessible and she contemplates waves of red-blue-green color drawing rings that widen and shrink, like those that rain creates in the pools of water. She would like to show them to someone. When she turns, stopping on a hill of hard rock, the brothers and sons she has adopted to save herself from loneliness do the same._ Aurora _, suggests a whisper in the back of her mind, far as if it came from the bottom of a cave._ What you are observing is the aurora.

_Sansa awakens from the dream in the dream with a tremor and claws her chest with both hands. The heart that feels under the fingers is hers, hers are the skin and the mouth and the eyes._

Follow the road I showed you. Follow it and you will find Nymeria.

_An old wrong will be healed, an old fault will be extinguished. Return what has unfairly been subtracted._

What was that? _She’s trembling. The images of the aurora, the smell of the forest are still vivid inside her._

A gift is passed in our family from father to son. The dreams we walk in are real. The direwolf isn’t a symbol, it’s part of us and we are part of him. Ask Jon. He will know.

 _Something pushes her and she falls and falls from a dizzying height._ _With a start, she wakes up in her bed._

* * *

"Gilly said you're leaving."

When Jon got into the room, Sansa continued to stoke the fire to take time. Now that he has walked across the floor and is behind her, however, she cannot continue to pretend. Stop procrastinating, she thinks. Confronts him.

"It's true," she answers quietly.

If possible, Jon's anger becomes even more marked, as if the obvious attempt to keep it at bay had proved useless, as if she were enough to ruin his best intentions. "What madness is this? You cannot be serious. You cannot leave the keep. We are under siege. It's not safe." His eyes gravely scourge her face for explanation. In front of her uncooperative reaction and the absence of exhaustive answers, he passes a hand through his hair in frustration. "Sansa, are you listening to me?"

She rises with a fluid movement. "I am and you still haven’t said anything that can make me change my mind."

"Why should you do it? Give me a good reason."

 _Ask Jon_ , Bran said. _He will know_. At the crucial moment, Sansa hesitates briefly. It isn’t a lack of trust, but something that comes close. She already knows that whatever Jon's answer will be, she will not like it. She knows it instinctively and for an impulse of self-defense, she would like to avoid the pain of the backlash. However, she isn’t a coward.

"Last night I had a dream. My body was no longer mine. My thoughts were foreign to me. Every sensation was amplified."

Jon slightly opens his eyes, the description of what happened isn’t unknown to him. "Wolf dreams."

"He told the truth." Sansa bends her head, nodding to herself.

"Who?" Jon asks.

"Bran. He told me that you would understand," she replies inexpressively and then, in an even more dull voice, she presses him: "How long has it been? How long have you been sharing Ghost's thoughts? How long have you spied me through his eyes?"

And there again is the rage, like a flame enclosed in a glass vial. She sees how he contract his fists, clench his mouth in a desolate and incredulous grimace. "You really believe -"

"Shouldn’t I?" She interrupts him coldly, but against her will she feels her eyes moisten.

The moment Jon notices it is also the moment his expression changes. His hands tighten around her arms and his forehead rests strongly against hers. "You stupid, stupid woman!" He exclaims fervently. His body trembles, for anger and for something else that is anything but anger. "Don’t you think that I’d like it? Being touched as you touch him, as something easy and natural, when you barely give me a look now and again? Don’t you think I would like to put my head in your lap or lie at your feet? Feel your caresses in my hair?" His sigh is deep and veined with weariness. "But you wouldn’t let me. I know and respect it, even if stay away from you it's impossible to me. I do it because I know it's what you want."

How can she resist? Yet she must. Isn’t a conflict that has been perpetuating itself for weeks, months? Which consumes her like the wick of a candle? Firmly, she tries to extricate herself from that semi-hug, but his grip doesn’t loosen. He doesn’t seem willing to let her go and if she were completely sincere with herself, she would admit that his desire coincides with hers. And even so, forcing the will of both, she tries again to slip away. Not physically, but in the most painful way she can imagine. _Words can hurt more than the sword._

"I have to go," she says.

Jon stiffens, his hands are stones on her bones, heavy and unmovable. He sighs, his forehead still close to hers. He seems resigned. "Didn’t you listen to one word of what I told you?"

She remains motionless in his arms, a statue of ice. The burden of the future weighs on her, clutches her heart. "I heard, but it doesn’t change what needs to be done, what _I_ have to do."

"Please." Jon's hand moves behind her neck. "Don’t go. Not where I cannot protect you.”

"Jon..." It would be easy, so easy to abandon herself against him. For once, let herself be loved by a good man. Dangerous thoughts that feed dangerous hopes. She will only know times of war, she ‘s aware of it now and is learning to accept it. If she wants peace, she must look for it in the short time that remains to her, because it will be the only one she will ever know. It’s so unfair. _You've got your family and your home back. It should be enough._

Yes, it would be easy. Easy and cruel. "I must."

"Then you leave me no choice." He lets her go, pulling back and unconsciously she bends over to follow the warmth of his body, her hands tighten between the folds of her skirts to hide the quiver that shakes them. He stares at her with frowning eyebrows. "If you force me, I will prevent you by any means. Even if I had to lock you in our rooms, you will not leave."

* * *

The moment he lets her go, Jon notices the way she hides her hands between the folds of the skirts. Sansa catches fire and her anger is magnificent to behold. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes sparkle like crystal blades.

"How dare you!" She says with fluttering nostrils. "It doesn’t matter who you are, you don’t have the right to dictate my actions, to interfere with my decisions. You aren’t my king, you aren’t my father and you aren’t my brother."

As soon as the words leave her lips, Sansa holds her breath and bites the inside of her cheek. The memories of misunderstandings and doubts stain the silence that follows, making it indigestible.

"Aye, I know. I know it very well," he says, looking straight at her. "But even if I'm nothing to you, you're everything to me. I don’t want to make you hate me, but what choice do I have? I cannot let you go. You could die -"

"I will not die," she says quickly, too quickly. "That's not how I'll die," she adds an instant later as though to remedy it.

"You don’t know what you're saying."

"I know it. I know how it will happen, but not when."

It isn’t the firmness with which she has spoken that convince him that she really believes in what she has just said, but her apparent indifference, as false as the coin of a cheater and the way she now carefully eludes his eyes.

"Is that why you avoid me and Arya?" He intuits. "Because you think you will die?"

"You don’t believe me," she says, pursing her lips in a bitter smile. "Not that it matters. It doesn’t change the facts. I will die before the end of the war."

The face is completely empty of every emotion, the voice doesn’t have any intonation. It doesn’t matter that her chest rises to the rhythm of her breaths, it's like having an anticipation of how she would look if she was really dead. Beautiful, cold and insensitive to what surrounds her.

"Enough!" He snaps and when he sees her withdraw, the bile invades his mouth. "Enough," he repeats more calmly, but his mind is in turmoil. "If it's true... if it's true, there must be a way, any way to prevent it."

"Jon," she says, calm and sad. "Jon. You must let me go."

"Sansa." He holds out a hand, fully expecting her not to let him touch her. However, there is no resistance on her part, only a too short delay to call it that way. She allows him to take her wrist and when he entwines his fingers with hers, Sansa just looks at him. At the bottom of her eyes there is something deeply wrong, a determination and a quiet despair that fills him with anguish and consternation. "Sansa, I..."

"Don’t!" She winces. The feelings that he was about to express before she stopped him seem to dismay her more than the prospect of her own death. "If you said it, everything would change,” she explains. “Everything would be different. Even if we wanted, we could never go back being what we were. If you said the words and then put someone else's well-being before mine, if you betrayed me or left me, I couldn’t forgive you anymore. You are a king and you will always have to put your subjects' needs before yours. Before being mine, you would always be theirs. That's why I will not say it, and you will do the same." She sighs. "I will leave at dawn, with or without your consent."

"You will bring Brienne and Podrick with you."

"If I agree, it’s likely that _he_ will come too."

He would like to smile for the hint of exasperated resignation in her voice. "More than likely," he agrees, but he’s thoughtful.

Sansa perceives his distraction. She stretches and lays her lips against his in a quick kiss, chaste and moderate. "I'll be back soon," she promises and he believes her, although he knows it's a lie.

"It will never be too soon."

* * *

The pack is exactly where Bran had told her it would be. In a glade east of Winterfell, one day’s ride.

The howling goes off and as soon as it happens, the biggest wolf, the one with the snout soiled with blood, grinds her teeth.

She’s a majestic, terrifying and proud creature. She’s taller than Ghost and looking at her, Sansa can get a very clear idea of how Lady would become.

She takes a step forward and at the same time two wolves behind Nymeria bend on their hind legs as if they were preparing for the jump.

Behind her she hears a rustle and finally Brienne emerges from the forest, sword drawn. Even without looking back at her, Sansa senses the worried fear radiating from her and knows that the wolves have done the same. They are enjoying Brienne’s nervousness.

"Stay back," Sansa orders in an imperative tone and raises an arm as to shield her from the hungry stares of the pack.

Brienne's wide eyes could contain the moon, blue and frightened by the threat they represent, for the overwhelming numerical superiority.

"My lady -"

"Stay back, I said!"

_This is my proof. Father, Mother, Robb, Rickon. Give me your courage because mine is drying up like a waterless river. Give me your strength._

Nymeria's eyes are fixed on her.

_Sister?_

It's like listening to the bellow of the wind.

_Yes, I'm your sister._

_Sister._

Bran's voice, deceptively soft.

And far away, another consciousness seems to imprint itself in the conjunction of theirs. _Brother. Sister._

A warm hearth and all the domestic comforts of a life indoors. Soft things to rest on, even softer hands to pet the fur. But life is something else. Wild and free. The thrill of hunting. Being all one with the wind and never feeling tired.

Sansa opens her eyes. _Strong. You must be strong and courageous._

_Come home. Your place is with us._

* * *

_Sister. Sister._

The compact earth underfoot. Snow against bare skin. Her new pack behind her and before her one of the few survivors of her old family, slaughtered by the avarice of the animal that walks on two legs and steals others fur.

 _Sister_.

She believed her dead. The most docile of the litter. Her alter ego. The one that caused the beginning of the ruin.

_Docile? My skin has become porcelain, ivory, steel. Now I trample the bones of the enemies and breath the ashes of the fallen. My body is a heart tree, my eyes are the winter stars that all know and never give advice, my breath is poison and death. Docile? I stopped being so when the beast hidden in the man shed my first blood._

* * *

"Sister," Arya murmurs and the arm with which she holds Needle falls to her side. She seems in a trance. Jon has already seen that look of an opalescent white.

Gendry tries to shake her without success. "What is she saying?"

"She’s not herself," Jon answers and the breath condenses in front of him. It's getting colder and Ghost is alert. The enemy is near. "Take her away!"

"Sister." Arya repeats. "Sansa."

"Didn’t you hear me?" Jon says irritably. "Run! Get her inside!"

Gendry grabs Arya by the back of the jacket and carries her on his shoulder.

Jon watches them disappear in the direction of the doors and when he’s alone, he grits his teeth and makes a noise of discomfort. He feels it. The call of the dream, of Ghost. He covers an eye and can see her walking towards a pack of starving wolves. The open arms at the hips, the hair like red lightning fragmented by snow crystals. And her expression without fear. Solemn and full of promises.

 _Sister_ , he hears others call her.

For her, he has another name. _Love_.

* * *

_Come home. Your place is with us._

She doesn’t intend to fight for men. The man believes himself to be civilized, but he’s a barbarian disguised as a non-beast.

_Fight with us then. For your family._

Family. She remembers the laugh of a man's puppy. The other half of her who chased her away.

 _She didn’t send you away. She protected you. Come home. Your choices are the choices of the pack._ _Your pack is ours._

* * *

When she abandons Nymeria's consciousness, the bond doesn’t completely melt. Although she is once again master of her body, Sansa feels naked. The world is a much colder place if you don’t have a fur.

"Will you come with me?" The request is a whisper, but the other wolves raise their ears.

Nymeria, in the land between man and animal, doesn’t turn her eyes away from her face.

One step and then another. It’s hypnotic to observe the lethal grace of her movements. Knowing that an assault would be enough to kill, makes her slowness even more magnetic.

Nymeria's nose is above her head. To bring herself down to her eyes she has to bend her neck.

Eyes in the eye, Sansa reaches out and leans against her nose. She bends her head in turn, as equals.

One by one the wolves form a circle around their leader. One by one they begin to howl and their call in the night is a lament of mourning and separation, but also of reunion. 


	10. Chapter 10

"And where will they be?"

The real question is anything but implied. How can he reassure them about the threat, not entirely unlikely, of being assaulted within the castle walls?

Jon doesn’t allow himself to be shattered by the dry tone of Lord Royce or the grumpy expression of Lord Manderly, although their eyes contain the same doubt as ever. _Can we trust your judgment? You, who gave up the crown as soon as an attractive queen got on your way?_

They don’t care about the convincing reassurance that he has given to the lord council, nor that in the last ten days the wolf pack has remained confined to the godswood whose access has been banned until further notice for obvious reasons. (The news that Lady Stark had returned from a trip that no one had been aware of - her absence too short to convince him of the need to make it public - and that even more disconcerting that there was a pack of wolves accompanying her and led by a direwolf, spread with predictable speed and the reactions that have unleashed in the inhabitants of the fortress had shaken its walls.)

Now, however, it was Jon - and not Sansa - who paid for it.

Again, Jon grants the same reply to what has become the torment of his mornings as well as a recurring topic of every conversation. "As I have already explained, the wolves will remain within the boundaries of the godswood until it has been proved that they are not a danger to the safety of any of us."

"And how do you intend to prove it?"

"Ask my -" Jon begins to respond annoyed, before stopping. To my sister Sansa, he would have once said and was about to say, more out of habit than anything else. By now Sansa represents a separate entity, without suitable definitions. The lords wait for him to give them a satisfactory answer. Holding his tongue in check, he coldly invites them to address the Lady of Winterfell to alleviate the concerns that are distracting them from the war that rages outside.

Jon sees them go away with a sense of complacency for being able to shut them up that too soon fades into boredom. He already knows that they will not complain to Sansa - how can one accuse of something a woman who tirelessly spends her entire days among the injured? The last time someone tried to approach Sansa in that sense, it wasn’t long before he was attacked by an angry horde of women. Sansa is respected. Loved. Protected. Everyone knows the sacrifices of Lady Stark and the devotion that Sansa receives in exchange for those efforts is something that fills him with pride. A man gains glory and fame with iron. A woman is allowed no other battlefield outside the walls of her castle.

"You're not very good at this," Sam says.

Jon turns his head, surprised to find him still there. He believed that Sam would follow the lords or that he had already returned to look after the wounded. Instead they are alone on the covered bridge and for once both don’t seem to be in a hurry to leave. "What?"

"Lying," replies Sam, scratching his cheek.

"Because it isn’t honorable."

"Not even die."

"An honorable death is preferable to a dishonorable life," Jon answers immediately. Or so he thought. Then he died and everything he believed true turned out to be wrong.

"Said the man who was sleeping with his sister," Sam mumbles.

Jon glares at him and Sam has the decency to blush. "Sorry."

It is snowing and for a moment a wistfulness that cannot be explained pierces his heart. The familiarity of the situation: the solid presence of Sam, being surrounded by walls of stone and dark wood, the cold that freezes the breath and numbs the body. It reminds him of Castle Black and his old life. He didn’t believe he would ever miss something he loved and hated in equal measure, and yet he does.

"Is it true?" Sam asks. "That she dreamed Bran". In his eyes shines the feverish impatience when usually something catches his interest. "They say she shares the thoughts of your direwolves, that's how she found Nymeria and persuaded her to follow her. So it’s true?"

Jon knows Sam better than he knows himself and - the thought is harassing, painful, disloyal, but no less true - sometimes he has the impression of knowing him more than he has known Robb. Of Robb he knew the lively child with whom he used to scuffle on the stairs of the Great Hall to decide who was the winner of a tournament of their conception. He knew the headstrong boy who put aside jokes and fun and was learning to accept the weight of responsibilities as heir and eldest son. He never had the opportunity to see the man burdened by the weight of a family in pieces, the capable and ferocious leader, the king without hesitation.

"Why do you care so much?"

"Don’t you find the idea interesting? They call them wargs. Skinchangers. I read about them while I was in Oldtown. Gilly says that according to a not written code for them it’s forbidden to eat human flesh and take possession of another man's body. Did you know that they cannot even mate like a wolf with another wolf? And that it’s easier to make a connection with a dog, but not with a cat?"

Sam is like a river full of overwhelming enthusiasm. In spite of himself, Jon smiles. "No, I didn’t know." 

"I would like to find out if it's true."

"Why don’t you ask Sansa?"

"I could never ask her something like that." Sam seems aghast. "It wouldn’t be appropriate. Tell me, Jon." Again that look of bright curiosity. "You told me that Arya did the same kind of dream in the past and Bran has the gift of the greensight. Isn’t strange that you're the only one without it? Do you think it has anything to do with your father?"

The sense of guilt is instantaneous. "Sam, there's something I have to tell you." In short, Jon reveals everything. Telling him about his wolf dreams is not the hard part. The hard part is observing his reaction, the unconscious way in which the desire to know struggles with betrayal and hurt. Sam's face is an open book.

"Since when?" Sam asks.

Jon doesn’t even consider lying. In that case Sam's rage would be justified. "The great ranging beyond the Wall."

"Oh." Sam adds no more and avoids his gaze.

"I'm sorry," Jon says hurriedly. "There's never been an opportunity." At his own ears it sounds like a weak excuse.

"No, I guess at that time you had other things on your mind," Sam agrees wearily. 

Jon closes his eyes. He will not think of Ygritte. He will not think of Ygritte. _The cave. Kissed by fire. Olly’s arrow-_

"Do you ever miss the days at Castle Black?"

Jon's fingers loosen the grip around the balustrade. "Sometimes. More than anything else I miss the feeling of having a purpose. I had one there. Not that now it's so different."

"Would you have imagined it?" Sam shows a smile that is a strange combination of sadness and acceptance. "In the end we are both where our fathers didn’t want us to be."

Jon returns a similar smile. "You're right, Lord Tarly."

Sam doesn’t smile anymore, but neither he darkens like it would have been until six months ago. Jon can understand what he feels. It’s the guilt of the survivors.

"Once the war is over I'd like to take Gilly and little Sam to Horn Hill. I think my mother would be happy."

"Sounds good."

Neither of them voices the necessary condition for this to happen: that the army of the undead is defeated by theirs, that in the meantime their threat doesn’t reach the lands of the Reach. 

"And you? What will you do once the war is won?"

 _I will not see the end of the war._ The serious and stubborn face of Sansa appears in his mind as an image reflected on water. The memory seems to contract inside him and then explode, preventing him from breathing normally. "I do not know. I will live, I think."

"It looks like a good start."

He threw out a breath that he had not noticed he had held back. "Aye, it seems, right?"

* * *

"We need to talk."

Although he must have been taken aback by his appearance in his rooms, Jon Snow-no-longer-the bastard doesn’t blink in his direction. Tyrion gives him full credit for this. But then, in a world at war with the impossible, what is left that can still impress?

"About?" He begins to undress. First the jerkin and then the underlying tunic, meticulously mended. "I thought we had established that Grey Worm's plan is the best strategy."

Tyrion couldn’t agree more. In the past weeks the strategy has changed radically, becoming less aggressive and focusing more on defense and surprise attacks in the daylight hours with great jeopardy of some lords who found it an unworthy tactic. It is now everyone's belief. This war will be a war of exhaustion so the ability to resist is all that matters. The discreet results and having quickly regained Wintertown have made opponents desist from further objections. In this regard, Grey Worm proved to be the most versatile commander with his experience in conquering the cities of Slaver’s Bay.

"It's a good plan," he says, brushing the beard on his chin and wishing - not for the first time in the morning - a jug of wine. "That's not why I'm here. You must talk to Daenerys. She must decide to name an heir." He sees Jon stiffen, as if the subject touches him personally and then dissemble and approach the bed where a spare of clean clothes awaits him.

"You know that things have become..." he hesitates and shakes his head "... complicated."

 _Complicated_ , Tyrion thinks with dark humor, _doesn’t even contain the dragon's head that is the problem of your relationship._ He stops before giving voice to his thought. He knows him enough to understand that he is not in the mood for irony as formality.

"I wouldn’t be here if it was not strictly necessary, but she doesn’t listen to anyone and I know she will listen to you."

"Why should she?"

"Because blood calls blood and half of what flows in your veins also flows into hers." He seems ready to deny and Tyrion raises a hand. "No, don’t pretend, not with me."

With frowning eyebrows and that sad expression in his long face, Jon Snow resembles Eddard Stark more than his trueborn sons. The irony doesn’t go unnoticed to him naturally. "How?"

"Sansa," he responds promptly and observes with fascination the emotion that flickers violently in his black eyes. He has already seen it elsewhere in the past, in those of Jaime when he told him about Cersei’s many lovers. It is jealousy and pain at the hypothesis of the infidelity of the woman whom one loves. In the darkened look of the man in front of him, Tyrion has the confirmation he needed. _Fool. In this you are still a boy. Don’t you know that a woman's heart is capricious and inconstant like a leaf in the wind?_ Yet, if the woman is Sansa Stark, perhaps trusting doesn’t necessarily become a weakness that results from a mistake. "No brother would look at his sister the way you look at yours. I have some experience. Of course, it makes sense. No one would have believed that the incorruptible Ned Stark could dishonor his wife. The alternative sounds much more convincing."

His relief is immediate when he realizes that Sansa hasn’t sold the secret of her family to the enemy. "He lied to us for years." The tone is harsh and inclement. Obviously the topic is still an open wound. And why shouldn’t it be? If a close family has ever existed throughout Westeros, this was the Stark.

"To save part of his family," he says. " _You_. A child guilty only of being born in the wrong place and time." Tyrion lets him completely absorb the meaning of his words, like ink on paper, before asking, "Will you do it?"

"She will not accept."

"Of course not." _But at least she will think twice before throwing herself against the enemy ranks with her usual recklessness_. Jon Snow's confusion is almost comical. Without hiding a grin, Tyrion begins to cross the room to leave, not before a last thought chimes into his head with the precision of a clock.

"Fire and ice," he says, on the door. "Jaime says your father was obsessed with it. An old prophecy. You should ask your friend Tarly." And as serious as he hasn’t been for the duration of the conversation, he thinks: _Your parents may have caused a war once, but perhaps thanks to them we could win this one._

* * *

"My lady, you are the spitting copy of your mother."

The hand around the ladle is paralyzed. The man lying on the cot at her feet has the dreamy and unnaturally glassy look that Sansa has learned to recognize as one of the effects of taking milk of the poppy. In spite a part of her feels an instinctive loathing for that compliment - the shadow of a sneaky smile, of shrewd and cunning eyes, the ghost of a man who has tainted the immaculate image of Catelyn Stark, almost making her hate her incredible resemblance to her mother - Sansa tries to smile gently. She awakens from the brief moment of dizziness to bend down and bring the ladle full of water to the livery lips of the man; then she passes to the man in the next cot and so on.

Once upon a time, she remembers absently, she felt proud. Pride and happiness. _That time died with the girl I was._

"Lady Sansa, the queen would like a meeting with you," says a voice behind her.

Sansa closes her eyes.

The moment has arrived.

Of the two women who are helping her, one leans over to take the ladle out of her hand while the other stares hostilely at the woman with the foreign accent and the curly dark hair that waits that she follows her. Tirzah and Anog, Sansa suddenly remembers their names, and they are of the Free Folk.

Sansa lets Missandei scrutinize her disjointed appearance and then the long line of cots that fill one of the many abandoned rooms of the First Keep.

"As you can see," she says with deliberate slowness, "at the moment it is impossible for me to satisfy the queen's request. I will try to do it as soon as possible. Would you be so kind to report this to her on my part?"

* * *

She's cleaning up an infected wound. The man screams and writhes, held firm against the straw-covered stone floor by Tormund. He lost a lot of blood and now that the leg has been partially cleaned up, Sansa fears that Sam or Master Wolkan will have to intervene to amputate it. It is impossible not to notice the advanced corruption of the flesh around the wound. Tormund's gloomy gaze confirms her worst suspicions.

She turns to Gilly and taking care not to be heard by the man, she whispers quickly, "Go look for Sam. Tell him to bring his tools and milk of poppy."

Sansa sees her hurrying in the direction of the adjoining room, and when she returns shortly after with Sam, she sighs in relief.

She walks away, but is still close - too close, too close - when the man's screams of pain hit her ears.

Fatigue suddenly overwhelms her, powerful as a sleeping potion. She reaches the outer corridor and leans her aching back against the wall. With her eyes closed, she tries to silence the screams that still echo in her head. When she is sure she has regained control, she opens her eyes and _she_ is there. Daenerys Targaryen.

Stunned by surprise, for a moment Sansa just stares at her and Daenerys does the same.In the end, after it seems that she has memorized every detail of the dress she wears - a fine fabric, worked with the specific purpose of recreating the whole scaled effect of the dragon's skin - and her livery collar, Sansa remembers her role and bows her head in deference as she learned to do in King's Landing.

Daenerys doesn’t replicate in any way. Her hard-edged eyes, of an undefined color between blue-purple and gray, examine the front of Sansa’s dress with censorship. "You have maesters and healers at your orders," she says, finally raising her gaze to point it on her face. "And in spite of this you're here, dirty with blood that's not yours."

It doesn’t sound exactly like a question, but it contains one. "They say that for the women and men who follow you, you worry like a mother. You should understand why I do it."

"They are my khalasar. It's different."

"No," Sansa says knowingly, "it's not."

A corner of Daenerys' mouth curls, as if holding a reluctant smile. "We need to talk. Not here."

Sansa nods. "I know the perfect place."

Just outside the entrance, coming from the graveyard that is located around the first keep, Ghost approaches her. Sansa beats a hand against her leg and obeying the signal he stands by her side. Without further delay, Sansa leads the way, not minding the unusual looks they receive along.

The silence that accompanies them is not interrupted until the arrival at the designated destination.

Sansa kneels in front of the direwolf. She feels Daenerys eyes pointed at her, penetrating and burning like sparks of wrought iron on an anvil. She focuses on Ghost and sinks her face into his fur, whispering reassurance to his ear. "Stay here. Keep an eye on the entrance and make sure no one disturbs us."

Ghost rubs his snout against her cheek. As soon as she moves away, he lies at the foot of the stairs that lead to the top of the broken tower. _Good boy._

Sansa collects her skirts with both hands and begins to rise. Daenerys follows her at close range. The path is so familiar that she could take those steps with her eyes closed. Before the arrival of Nymeria and the wolves, Sansa would have no doubts about where to take the queen, but now the godswood is forbidden to anyone and the only other place equally safe from prying ears are the crypts. Sansa has already contravened too many traditions of her family to transgress that too, and as long as she has breath in her body no one without blood Stark will set foot in the tombs where her ancestors rest. Arya's favorite hideaway remains the only viable solution and it is unlikely that her sister is there.

Her speculations break in the unexpected presence of -

"Ser Jaime."

"Only Jaime." His smile sparkles in the dim light like a slice of sun. He's sitting on the window sill to which some shutters have been added and he's cleaning the blue armor that Sansa knows belongs to Brienne. "I am nothing more, neither a knight nor a lord."

"Are you alone?" Sansa looks around. Over the months, despite Arya’s protests, other furnishings have been added to the scarce furniture of the tower: a table and a couple of chairs, a basin, a bed large enough to hold two people and a screen. And it is precisely to the latter that Sansa casts a cautious look.

"At this hour the wench will be training with your sister," he tells her and brushes the hair off his forehead with another cheeky smile. "There are women who find greater pleasure in another type of encounter. But you too are not among them. Or maybe yes." He raises his eyebrows and whistles through his teeth. "Damn girl, don’t you sleep at all?"

"Not if I can avoid it." Sansa smiles back at him and is about to ask him to leave them alone when Jaime's eyes point like a hunter on the prey on a point behind her.

"Your grace." His greeting is insolent.

The expression of Daenerys is relaxed and yet exudes aversion. "Jaime Lannister."

"In the flesh and guilty of most of the crimes I'm accused of."

"You killed my father." She takes a step forward, arms folded in front of her and the inflexibility of someone who is preparing to issue an unquestionable verdict. "Do you deny it?"

"No." His smile has disappeared. "No and I would do it again."

"You killed the king you swore to serve. Why?"

"He was the king, but he wasn’t my king. For me it was a crazy old man who threatened to burn my family. He would have burned the whole city if I had not prevented it." Jaime doesn’t look away from Daenerys and his voice doesn’t waver. "Family before duty. Justice before honor. I made my choice a long time ago and I came to terms with the man I've become in the eyes of the world and the gods since then."

 _Oathbreaker_ , Sansa thinks, but without the condemnation of the past. _Kingslayer. Turncoat._

"Now, with your permission..." Jaime gets up, the pruritic grin that makes a mockery of everything and everyone takes possession of his lips again as if it had never abandoned them. "My lady wench is waiting to run me off my feet indecorously."

* * *

"He tried to kill my younger brother." Sansa speaks cautiously. Her gaze doesn’t focus on the attractive and resolute woman who observes her as if she was an enigma she intends to solve, but wanders outside the window, on the familiar scene it offers. The wolfswood in the distance and the courtyard below teeming with men in the midst of daytime activities, the coming and going of busy women and soldiers. "He pushed him from this tower just because he saw something he shouldn’t have seen. But Bran didn’t die. He fell and his fall was the beginning of the diatribe between our families." She turns and crosses her direct gaze.

"What did he see?" Asks Daenerys.

"The truth." Sansa sighs. "Nothing but the truth."

In the pause of silence that follows, the two women square each other, contemplating the differences that separate them, the similarities that unite them.

It is not hatred that has restricted both of them from crossing the mutual path, that has convinced them to keep their distance, but prudence and simple common sense. Both indispensable, one that encloses the present and the other the promise of a shining future. Daenerys represents everything she wanted to be, everything she wanted to have. She is the queen that Cersei could have become in better circumstances. And it was envy, envy and jealousy that at the beginning pushed Sansa to avoid her. There were nights when she couldn’t sleep, seized with a devouring anguish, a feeling of overwhelming, squashing intensity. She wriggled between the sheets like a fish caught in the net. The thought of Jon's arms wrapped around Daenerys body, more insidious than fear, more painful than any wound.

"You're probably wondering why I requested this meeting," says Daenerys.

"No. I know the reason." She only wonders why the request came so late.

"The reason," says Daenerys imperatively, lifting her chin. "Say it."

"Jon," Sansa responds and as if she had summoned him, his shadow seems to appear between them, bringing them together and separating them at the same time.

"I intend to name him my heir."

"You could marry," Sansa points out.

"With who?" Daenerys grimaces. "The only husband I would have chosen wouldn’t accept."

_Not even if the price is peace?_

"I was married. Did you know that?"

"I heard it."

"Twice, just like you." Daenerys nods and her expression becomes remote and inscrutable. Nobody could say if the memories that are re-emerging to her mind are pleasant ones. "The first time I was sold by my own brother as a broodmare in exchange for an army that never arrived."

 _Viserys Targaryen. The beggar king_ , Sansa thinks.

"The second time, at the insistence of my counselors, as a compromise for peace. I know what you're doing. You can believe that nobody has noticed it. You started to fade, you no longer participate in war councils, you have chosen to be a shadow."

Does she think she intends to deny it? She will not. "I did," replies Sansa.

Daenerys' eyes are reduced to two slits and full of misunderstanding and accusation. "You're leaving him the command."

"I'm letting him experience and sharpen his judgment," Sansa corrects. "For him to become the king he could be." _For when I will not be here anymore._

"You give up power for a man." The misunderstanding has turned into disbelief. She doesn’t believe her, it's obvious. Why should she? "I have heard many stories about you. Sansa Stark. Sansa Lannister. Alayne Stone. Sansa Bolton. Lady Stark. The Lady of Winterfell." Every name she says is a price paid to survive. "You could have been queen. You are a trueborn. Your right was more valid than his."

And yet he is the one whom the lords have chosen. Sansa doesn’t hold a grudge against him. 

"When he came to Dragonstone," continues Daenerys, "you could have taken the title. Nobody would have prevented you. Jon wouldn’t have blamed you."

"No, he probably would have been happy," she agrees. "I saw what I could have become if I had walked that road and I don’t think I would have been strong enough."

"Strong for what?"

"Enough to not misunderstand revenge with justice." Sansa knows what Daenerys is doing. The real intent behind that meeting. She is testing her. She probably wants to feel the extent of her loyalty, to find out how far it arrives. _You cannot scare me. You're not the first one trying to read me, to bend me. I am no longer the defenseless creature I once was. I will not be intimidated. I see you. I see you and I know you, Daenerys Targaryen._

"I met five kings in my life." Sansa waits for an interruption that doesn’t arrive. Daenerys listens carefully and evaluates every word pronounced. "The first was Robert Baratheon. The first time I saw him I remember that I was extremely disappointed. I had expected the imposing man of my father's stories. I found myself in front of a fat man who smelled of wine." She remembers that day well, the day when she was still a sweet child of summer. Naive and with dreams that were deceptions of the mind. "He told me I was pretty and for this I forgave him for having disregarded my expectations. He was a warrior, but he wasn’t made to reign. Instead of building something good, after the war he preferred to bask in regret. Despite this, he gave us years of peace and prosperity. The second was Joffrey."

Sansa knows that her voice has suddenly become cold and hard and she sees that Daenerys has noticed the change. In the mouth, under the tongue she feels the phantom flavor of blood and terror. She clenches her fists and recalls as a friend the image of how he died, suffocated in his own vomit.

"In appearance he embodied everything that a prince should be. He was knightly, gallant and pleasant. I thought of the children I would give him and I rejoiced at how beautiful they would be. The illusion lasted a few months. When he convinced me to lie for him and for my lies an innocent boy and my direwolf died. When he made me beg before the Court for the life of my father, when heedless of that promise he had him beheaded. When he led me to see his head stuck in a pike on the ramparts of the keep. My father was an honorable man. He was not a traitor and his only fault was the trust he placed in the wrong people. Like Robert Baratheon before him, he died for this."

Sansa pronounces the last words with the purpose of a sentence and takes a deep breath before continuing, "The third was my brother Robb whose valor in battle made him win the respect of the Northerners to the point that convinced them to recognize him as their king."

"They should not have," Daenerys intervenes. "They did not have the right."

"Who has it?" Sansa replies unperturbed. "The right to reign is conquered by sword. Or as in the case of your family by fire. You said your brother sold you. Mine had two armies, but he abandoned me in the lions' den. An exchange of prisoners had been offered to him. Me for Jaime Lannister. He refused. I do not blame him. He acted like a king. He made his choice. Justice does not always lead to peace. Your justice is not mine and mine is not my sister's or Jon's. He was a good king, but he was a boy and a misstep cost him his life."

"He broke a betrothal."

Again, Sansa could feel anger at the implied insult to her brother's memory. She could, maybe she should. However the exhaustion that she feels overwhelms sadness, mourning, resentment. There were others who denigrated Robb, men who are now dead and buried ten feet below ground, others who walk like corpses in the enemy's ranks, others who breathe under the roof of her house and have sworn allegiance to Jon after denied the help needed to reconquer Winterfell to steal it back from Ramsay. Daenerys is not the first and will not be the last. And yet, Sansa feels the unstoppable urge to explain, tell the story for what it really is. The truth about Robb's life and his death.

"He married a girl," she says and can almost see him: the red glow of his hair struck by the sun in the practice yard and that goodness that made him sensible to the wrong, almost cruel in his justified vengeance to straighten them. "He probably did not love her, but he did it anyway because he had dishonored her. Because he had sworn he would never have had bastard sons. There would no longer be Snow in Winterfell. He broke off a betrothal and that's why he and my mother were slaughtered during my uncle's wedding banquet, under the pretense of false hospitality."

Sansa can read it in Daenerys's face. It is not necessary for her to add anything else. That is a story that does not need to be told. Someone has already proceeded to report it to her. Probably Tyrion. Her mother's last chilling scream before grief silenced her, her brother's violated body. Sansa closes her eyes, tries to breathe beyond the lump in her throat. When she opens her eyes, the lump has moved a little lower, in the place that usually occupies, between the heart and the stomach. A third and abnormal organ that throbs and stirs.

"The fourth was Tommen. Unlike Joffrey, he was a sweet child, but fundamentally weak and easy to manipulate. Under the right guidance he could have become a kind king." She will not think of Tommen just as she will not think of Margeary. The dead are lost forever, but the living are reasons enough to go on and fight. "The fifth is Jon. Jon is brave, kind and strong. He is my father’s son. He is a good king, but he could be a great king."

"You love him."

For an interminable moment it seems to her that the air in the room has disappeared, but it is an impression and in the next one Sansa begins to breathe normally.

"I love him," she says quietly and proudly.

"He’s your brother."

He is. She has no intention of denying it. Jon is her brother, but he is not just that. He is something more. _Much, much more._

"When I had lost all hope," _I felt broken and horrible and believed that no one would ever look at me again without pity,_ "he was there. He stayed with me, even though he could have lived a new life elsewhere. He fought my battles and my enemies, turning them into the battles and enemies of both." _He looked at me as if I were something precious. I felt his desire to protect me and not because I was too weak and stupid, but because for him it was right and natural and because it was what he wanted._ "He wanted to be the brother that I had never allowed him to be, to rebuild the family we both believed lost forever. I was no longer alone against the world. I had found an ally, a friend, a confidant. Someone to love and protect, something to fight for. I had found my family and the best part of me. When we were young, everything was different. I was different. We have never been particularly close. Our roles did not allow it. I out of respect for my mother and him out of respect for my feelings. He believed that I hated him, that I was ashamed of our kinship."

"Was it true?"

Sansa thinks of her mother, the humiliation in her eyes whenever Jon would beat Robb during training. What she must have felt thinking of her father with another woman.

"It was. For a long time. Before I understood that blood is not all that matters and that the shame of a name is nullified by the nobility of a true and honest nature. Faced with that even the honor and duty pale. There's nothing I would not do for my family. Nothing."

"Tear your heart from your chest. Would you do that too?" Suddenly Daenerys looks like a creature of passion and torment and in the cold light of the room, her whole body flickers like a sword blade immersed in the fire. _Is this the woman you love? Jon, is this fire that you yearn for?_ "Would you renounce love for love?" She presses her and Sansa understands that the answer she will give is of fundamental importance to her.

 _A life, the voice of his brother whispers in her ear with ineluctability. Yours, Sansa._ "Yes."

And it is as if Daenerys changes completely, a veil had fallen and left her naked and exposed. Sansa would not be able to describe it. She assists and reflects herself in the pain that now transpires from the other woman's face, a pain that seems old and deep like the sea. A pain that makes her fragile and strong, human, a true queen.

"My heart died with my first child, probably the only one I'll ever carry." There is a subtle tremor in Daenerys' voice, like the light crackling of the hearth. "I buried him in the Dothraki lands, along with the man who was my sun and stars as I was the moon of his life. I held my heart in my fist and burned it to ashes when I killed my love. It was already in the valley of shadows, but it was my hands that took his last breath. His eyes wide open in the void, the rattling sound that he emitted... I saw desecrated corpses, pierced, burned corpses. I have seen rivers of blood flowing through the stone streets of golden cities and a whole fleet burning under the fire of my dragons. Nothing filled me with horror and despair like the moment I lost Drogo."

"Do you regret it?"

"It is not my destiny to be happy. Greatness and glory are obtained with pain. The price is always too high, but when it was necessary I was willing to pay for it." She assays her with penetrating eyes, not as an adversary, but as if she wanted to give her trust, to know if she deserves it. "When will your time come, will you be able to do the same?"

_I will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this chapter makes me nervous. The topics dealt with, especially in the first part, are varied. Each dialogue deals with a different one. The end of the war, with the spring dream it represents. Tyrion's fears about Daenerys recklessness. And the conversation dear to me, the one between Sansa and Daenerys. In this conversation, in particular, I tried with poor results to face a topic that is very close to my heart: the concepts of peace and justice. Peace and justice are complementary. There is no justice without peace and there is no peace without justice. Justice is a cultural consequence and is the rule of an organized society. Yet every country applies its own form of justice and this makes it somewhat individual. Peace is basically understood as the absence of war and is instead universal. Justice and peace are two different things, and what I have always loved about the character of Daenerys is that she does not fight in the name of peace, but justice. Hers. Sansa realizes the difference. Perhaps she is the only character who has not misunderstood them. And within herself she must know that Ramsay's death was not justice, not only, but also revenge, a personal redemption. Perhaps that is why she organized the Petyr's death with great pomp, before witnesses and with her brothers as accusators and judges. And Sansa in this chapter says something fundamentally true: her justice is not that of Arya or Jon. It is easy to misunderstand revenge with justice and aware of this weakness, knowing what awaits her, Sansa preferred to step aside.
> 
> I deeply love both the two characters, but I find that while in the case of Sansa her personal growth was undeniable, in the case of Daenerys it was lost along the way. Daenerys dominates the scenes, she is impulsive, a woman of action and not of words, but she has never really learned to reign. She was beginning to do it step by step, but then what happened happened. Reigning is not just about fighting, a question of charisma or idealism or the ability to inspire admiration and loyalty in the people around us. It is also the ability to listen, the art of compromise. And in a context in which the characters die like flies because they are too honorable or good or because they do not act, Daenerys (together with Arya) gives great, immediate satisfactions. It's all too easy to love her for it. Just as it is easy to forget about Sansa and her efforts. And that's why I love Sansa (and Brienne). We all want to be Daenerys, but in the real world there are no dragons, we're not fireproof and we can only rely on our strength. In the world we exist as Sansa and Brienne, warriors and idealists and we carry within us our dreams of fire and blood. Words are wind, actions are stones. But a strong enough wind can move a stone. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, I think I have rewritten it a dozen times because it did not convince me...


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